An Article by C.J. (826 words, 4 min. read)
Walk into any museum’s modern art wing and you will find it. Not the painting, but the person. Arms crossed, eyebrows raised, loudly declaring:
“I could have done that.”
Usually followed by:
“This is not art.”
And if they are feeling bold:
“They are just making it up.”
Abstract art has a special talent for making people mad. A field of sunflowers? Beautiful. A marble statue? Impressive. But a canvas with strange shapes and colors? Suddenly, it is a cultural emergency.
The First Hurdle: Feeling Before Understanding
Here is the problem: abstract art does not tell you what it is. There is no tidy story, no “This is a cat” label. Instead, it demands that you feel first, and for a lot of people, that is uncomfortable.
We are trained to understand before we react. But abstract art flips the order. It is like listening to a song in a language you don’t speak: you catch the rhythm, maybe even feel something, but part of you keeps straining for meaning. When it does not come? Frustration.. It is the same way you can be moved by a symphony without knowing the story behind it. In classical music the notes work directly on your emotions, bypassing logic altogether.
The Second Hurdle: Culture and Language
Even if you do feel something, there is another layer: the visual vocabulary of art.
That big red square? Could be a nod to Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematism. The jagged brushwork? Maybe a wink at Willem de Kooning. The color fields that seem to breathe? Mark Rothko’s quiet dialogue with human emotion. The energetic drips and splatters? Jackson Pollock turning the act of painting itself into the artwork.
Without some art history, you are missing half the conversation. It is like walking into a party where everyone’s telling inside jokes. You might laugh politely, but you’re not in on it.
How It All Started
Abstract art was not born out of laziness or a lack of skill. It was a rebellion.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, artists began questioning the need to represent reality at all. Photography had arrived and frankly, it could capture a landscape more precisely than any brush. So painters asked: What else can painting do?
- Wassily Kandinsky is often credited with making the first purely abstract work in 1911, inspired by music and spirituality.
- Malevich pushed for total abstraction with Black Square (1915), declaring that art didn’t need to depict objects to have meaning.
- The movement spread: Piet Mondrian reduced forms to lines and primary colors; Jackson Pollock turned painting into a performance with his drips and splatters; Rothko sought to make you feel as if you were “inside” a color.
- Lebanese artists flirted with abstract art when bold pioneers like Jean Khalife, Etel Adnan, Saliba Douayhi, shifted from painting the traditional portraits and ventured in the unknown world of abstraction. Today, we find masters like Jamil Molaeb, Rana Raouda, Ribal Molaeb and Sundus Al Khalidi devoting most, if not all of their recent work to abstraction and the art of portraying feelings on canvas.
Each was responding to the world around them (war, industrialization, new philosophies) stripping art down to its purest elements: color, shape, texture, movement.
The Greatest Hits of Abstract Art Criticism (and Why They are Wrong)
“I could have done that.”
Cool. But you did not. And if you did, it would not be hanging in MoMA, it would be on your fridge under a cat magnet.
“It is just random colors.”
So is your flag, and people salute that.
“They are making it up.”
Yes. It is called creating. That is literally the point.
“My kid paints like this.”
Great. Nurture that. But also: your kid’s finger painting is not the result of decades of discipline, experimentation, and intent.
“It does not make sense.”
Neither do dreams, and yet you remember them.
Why It Matters
Abstract art is a challenge. It asks you to loosen your grip on certainty, to trust your emotions without a neat explanation, and to stretch your cultural literacy.
Technically, it is far from random. Artists think about composition, color theory, texture, spatial balance, and how a viewer’s eye will travel across the canvas. Some works are layered over months, each glaze and stroke placed with intention.
If it leaves you puzzled, shaken, or even irritated, congratulations. It worked.
So next time you stand in front of something that “makes no sense,” try this:
- Stop demanding it explain itself like a waiter listing the specials.
- Let yourself feel whatever comes up: confusion, awe, annoyance.
- Ask why you feel that way.
You might still hate it. That is fine. But you will be meeting it on its own terms, which is all it ever wanted.
