After getting into painting a few years ago, I dug into aesthetics a bit and quickly ran into the same fundamental problem: most abstract works are, prima fascie, giant heaps of crap. I mean, I sat down and tried to read different intros to art theory, etc, but it all was so much flim flam trying to paper over the obvious: it was fecal matter, sold for high prices (don't get me started on pomo performance stuff).
One text I ran into was by an Objectivist: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P9RV9PE/ - which goes into the motives and rationales for why the modern art went the way it did - and compares with other societies. Fascinating book.
Fundamentally, the Objectivist text comes down to roughly this
> – Proletarian: relevant to the workers and understandable to them.
Which is a description of soviet realism (something Objectivists might find startling).
I also want to stress that the notion that art is subjective, or that it should make you feel, is wholly a product of the Romantic era and its challenge of a previous understanding of art as being an _objective_ thing with a ladder of values.
One text I ran into was by an Objectivist: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P9RV9PE/ - which goes into the motives and rationales for why the modern art went the way it did - and compares with other societies. Fascinating book.
Fundamentally, the Objectivist text comes down to roughly this
> – Proletarian: relevant to the workers and understandable to them.
Which is a description of soviet realism (something Objectivists might find startling).
http://www.russianartdealer.com/socialist-realism/
I also want to stress that the notion that art is subjective, or that it should make you feel, is wholly a product of the Romantic era and its challenge of a previous understanding of art as being an _objective_ thing with a ladder of values.
So I strongly concur with you here.