@estreams:
" Impressionistic art requires a lot of mental work to make sense of. I just don't see it or get it, appreciate it or like it. I also find, as hard as i may try to enjoy improvisational jazz, that i don't get it, appreciate it, or like it. Instead, I love Realism art and instrumental smooth jazz!!"
Nothing wrong with that-- each to his/her own.
I am confused by your choice of Impressionism as "difficult", however. Most Impressionist works are very pretty with easily recognizable subject matter. No doubt these are some of the rerasons why it's probably the most popular style, world-wide. Think Monet, for example.
Perhaps what you mean is Expressionist Art -- especially Abstract Expressionist. Art, such as Pollock, De Kooning, Gorky, etc. ?
Scrawly, chaotic, messy stuff-- the "my kid could do that with fingerpaints" stuff.
As a right-brained person who's made quite a bit of art and who enjoys both abstract and representational approaches, I'd suggest to you that abstract art cannot be "made sense of"-- it's simply not designed to fulfill that function. It is designed to communicate but not in a literal manner. It's not a puzzle to be figured out, logically. If you approach it in this way, it's understandable that it feels like "hard work". Abstract art implies rather than replicates. There is a fampous quote about this by Paul Klee-- "Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible". What does it make visible? That which is otherwise hidden. Here is another of his quotes: "Art should be like a holiday; something to change his point of view".
Please understand that I'm not saying "This is the truth"-- I'm only attempting to convey to you the spirit of abstraction.
I very much hope this does not sound patronizing or elitist to you because it's not about "High Art" or "Low Art".
We could think of art as a spectrum, with photography that has no aim but to represent optical reality perfectly, at one end and the most abstract painting at the other end.
On the photography end of the spectrum, think of a newspaper photgraph. All you notice is the subject-- let's stick with a bridge across a canyon. There's no mistaking what the subject is and the medium used to convey this information is entirely transparent. It's like an audio system that's so perfectly resolving that it adds no coloration to the music. You see a bridge crossing a canyon and you give little thought to the quality of the medium communicating this image. What you see is what you get.
This is your "black and white" world.
Now, as we move across the sprectrum, we come to a Photorealist artist, such as Chuck Close, known for enormous and enormously life-like, portraits. In fact, you might at first assume they're photographs. At the same time, once you learn they're not photographs, youbegin to pay more attention to the medium or mark-making. You may marvel at the artist's technique, for example. You're no longer wholly focusing upon the subject; you're beginning to also focus upon how the image is being delivered to you and perhaps, how that shapes your expereience of the subject.
Next, moving just a bit futher along our spectrum, we might encounter a drawing of a bridge across a canyon, executed by someone with incredible draughtsmanship. You still recognize the subject -- bridge across a canyon-- with no difficulty but you do notice certain aspects of how the image is presented. You may marvel at aspects of the technique-- a masterful use of shading, perspective or varying line weights, for example. Because it's arguably more difficult to create a "photographic" quality with pencil, you may marvel at how the mark-making creates such a convincingly representational image and thus, you pay more attention to the "how" as opposed to solely focusing upon the ""what". This doesn't detract from you capacity for comprehending the subject -- bridge across a canyon-- but the medium (pencil drawing) and the qualities of mark-making it employs are beginning to take on more weight in your process of perceiving what you are looking at. they are being to exert more of an influence upon your experience of the art-work.
In the middle of the spectrum, we find art in which the subject-- bridge across a canyon-- and awareness of the marks that convey the subject take on equal weight in the experience of perception. You notice the brush-strokes as much as you notice what they're conveying or constructing-- an image of a bridge across a canyon. Furthermore, the mark-making aspect begins to convey more than purely optical information. It begins to provide information on other levels. For example, you may get the sense that the artist has a very comfortable association with the bridge- Maybe he crossed it many times as a child on his way to see his favorite uncle. Or, perhaps the mark-making gives you the sense of danger and foreboding-- it's a bridge you might easily be swept off by the wind toward a rendevous with death on the jagged rocks below.
You get the point, I hope. When we eventually reach the complete other side of the spectrum, there's very little representational reference to a bridge crossing a canyon. The marks simply do not provide any easily recognizable clues to anything we recognize. On that side of the spectrum, we expereince the very opposite of what we saw in the newspaper photograph-- the medium or mark-making utterly dominates and the subject seems to have competely left the building. . . er canvas.
This is where the most Abstract visual art and most abstract music lives.
What you get is what you see/perceive. But the method of perceiving what is being conveyed by the artist is very different from the method that worked on the opposite end of the spectrum. There is black and white but ther are also many shades of gray... and they're not neatly arranged-- they're all jumbled up, together.
The rational mind is of little use, here. It is instead about sensing or "feeling into" what's on the canvas. And I'd argue that such sensing is pretty much impossible if you are, at the same time, trying to "figure it out". You cannot simultaneously engage the left and right sides of the brain! The need to "drive the entropic world we live in towards black and white as much as possible" and "...put order to chaos" falters here. In fact, it is only by surrendering the above drives that one can "get" the art on this end of the spectrum.
Some people prefer hanging out on the "black and white" side of the spectrum; others favor the middle while some prefer the chaos of the other side.
It's a very human drive to praise what pleases us and reject what does not. This extends to embracing those who share our inclinations and demonizing those who do not.
If you feel entirely satisfied by Smooth Jazz and representational art, enjoy your preferences! Don't listen to those who tell you are wrong.
At the same time, we can all feel somewhat dissatisfied at times by exclusively focusing upon that to which we're most naturally attracted.
At such times, it can be enlivening to reach out beyond our habitual
comfort zones and explore something a bit different. But when someone tells us we should be listening to something more sophisticated, hip or whatever, that's not much of an incentive.
I hope this is helpful in some way.
