"openness to new experience"
I didn't want to rush to judgement so I've come back to this image several times but I'm still nonplussed.
Maris,
You recognize conditions that beset us all in viewing works of art. We may notice the work, look at it but nothing moves us! I appreciate your insight as to how this comes about. You are right to point to our own limitations and not blame the artist when we are not impressed and taken by the work.
I agree that for
anyone approaching a work of art new to them, cultural and educational background may be needed, whether or not there's a message engraved within or some purpose behind it.
Also it's true as you indicate that, if we are ourselves artists, we have ways of expression that we find not only efficient and evocative but also have some merit in the quality of the craft we use. This comes from a
lot of our own training and also extensive experience with the work of others we respect and enjoy. That strong and well-earned creative discipline might indeed limit us in appreciating work that uses utterly different techniques, standards of workmanship, motifs and forms. These may even appear crude or hardly purposeful. So naturally we'll not become so readily drawn in and engaged in such, to us, at least, "odd" work.
However, being an artist, and not just a craftsman skilled at workmanship, we also have a well developed sense of
"openness to new experience". We can then work to close the gap between us and the artist. If the latter him/herself, has an introduction to that work or if there's a capable curator, then getting something more out of the new work
might become possible. That's why good museums spend a year or more curating their proposed new exhibits so that they can provide the proper background and education to allow the works to be appreciated and so move more than a few of us despite our limitations.
I have approached the challenge of this picture from the pragmatic reverse process of asking, "What would separate this from the ordinary and make me pay attention and want to own this?"
Asher