By: Hilarie M. Sheets
Art News
2000
Summary
How to learn to stop worrying and love the art you don't understand? Everyone's had the experience. You walk into a gallery and see something hanging on the wall or sitting there on the floor or hovering all around you and you just don't know what to make of it. It may annoy you—what is this, and why is this art? Or you may find yourself intrigued, or even kind of loving it, although you couldn't really begin to explain what it might mean. Jerry Saltz, art critic of the Village Voice, recently named this phenomenon the "I-Don't-Get-It Aesthetic," referring to the kind of contemporary art that doesn't easily let us in.