Artists Speak: I Don’t Understand Contemporary Art: A Guide

Lately, I often find myself in the position of defending art. I am a contemporary artist and art tutor. By virtue of the will, I found myself surrounded by people who know little, nothing, or hold misconceptions based on the common belief that art is something beautiful and easily comprehended. I became fascinated by how lawyers, IT specialists, and other non-art-related people give opinions regarding art solely based on their personal taste. And sometimes, they argue with someone who has dedicated six years to studying various aspects of this field. Of course, here my inner teacher comes out, and I can't keep my thoughts to myself.

In this role, I have to explain the entire complex concept of ART in just five minutes. While questions about “past” and formalist art often disappear due to its understandable visual component and correlation with their aesthetics, contemporary and ultra-contemporary art provoke accusatory stances from questioners due to ignorance. In such cases, I take a deep breath, buying time to turn pictures and feelings over in my head (yes, feelings, because they are one of the fundamental components of any art) and try to find a starting point on a giant map called ART. I transfer and rearrange elements of my accumulated six years of experience, which have allowed me to get closer to the core of it.

Then I created this small instruction of “How to Understand Contemporary Art for Beginners”, designed for a broader audience that doesn’t have any or a lot of experience in contemporary art practices. 

1. Now, you find yourself at a contemporary art exhibition. Don’t rush to make conclusions. Try to spend some time in the hall. Unlike entertainment, art has a subtler signal, so you need to tune into it. Especially in a city like London, where we are constantly bombarded with information and stimulation, we can become less receptive to the little, quieter impulses. 

   
   

2. Choose an artwork that resonates with you internally. While the area of contemporary art might be dark and unknown to us, in this darkness, we can only rely on our feelings.

   
   

3. Then the most interesting part begins. Art, and contemporary art in particular, is a mystery that we need to unravel. Unlike formalist art that speaks a more traditional language, contemporary art often uses private language forms and has freedom from morphological constructions. So, if you are unfamiliar with contemporary practices, it is harder to appreciate or understand them. (That is why, for example, formalist art is easier to sell). So you need to decode this cipher.

   
   

   1. The artist is dead; long live the artist. The artist’s influence on the viewer’s perception ends as soon as they complete their work. Here, the viewer must do the internal work and build a chain of meanings. There is no definitive and correct connotation of any particular work; it depends on the surrounding context. You also bring your own context with your experience, mood, and artistic insight. The quality of your interaction with the work naturally depends on the artist’s ability to convey their thoughts and your ability to perceive it. And sometimes, if you feel nothing and understand nothing, it may turn out that the artist or the work is of low quality. Therefore, at the beginning of your journey, I recommend relying on the experience of professionals in the field and practicing with recognized works of art.

4. And only after doing the independent work do I recommend studying the texts and contexts of the artist.

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Let's have a little practice.

This is a work by Nico Vascellari that I saw last September at Forte di Belvedere in Florence.

Photo credits: Ela Bialkowska/OKNO studio

We see a "Vogue" magazine covered with dirt and a fragment of a face. On a sensory level, this work is very attractive. From afar, the dirt reminds us of velvet, and, combined with the magazine's association with fashion and beauty, it can conceal the horror of death, which is linked to the earth. The first association that comes to mind is death and rebirth. The slime evokes something messy, swampy, magmatic, and "shitty" for each of us.

But if I recall some knowledge in mythologies, where both mist and slime are portals that allow access to the magical and mysterious, a sort of backward journey emerges: on a sensory level, it recalls a prenatal state, because it is from the earth, from the humus, that humans are shaped. From the fertile contamination of organic material, as primordial chaos, the path proceeds towards the most mysterious and misunderstood dimension of human nature, up to the conflict of sensations of repulsion and poetry, passing through destruction and the struggle with the animal world, which is wilder than us.

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Having done this mental exercise a sufficient number of times, I caught myself thinking that this is like telling someone to start with small steps. It’s like exercising. Start training for 5 minutes a day; there’s no need to rush alone on an unprepared path. No matter how good it is, we humans strive for development. Like it or not, we must move forward. I assure you that good contemporary art can bring as much pleasure and revelation as the art of the past.

Ekaterina is a London based Multidisciplinary artist. She works in different mediums such as painting, video, installation, performance and sculpture.  Ekaterina studied Fine Arts in Visual Art Center by Ilya Gefter, Tel-Aviv, Israel  along with Contemporary Art and Practice with Tzvetnik, Russia and Art Project with Get Art Fit, Russia.  Ekaterina participated in a number of exhibitions, among others are MUDI in Arte at Museo di Salerno (2020) and London Art Biennale 2021. Ekaterina has undertaken a number of  artist residencies: SpudWORKS in the UK and Transhumanisme in Israel, Domus Residency in Italy. Ekaterina was short-listed as “Art at the Museum” and awarded as Outstanding work in visual art by Write-Haus 2023, Tel-Aviv and awarded as “Exceptional Talent” by Art Council of England. Her first solo show “Map Out” was held in 2022.

You can visit her website here

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