You Don’t Have to Love It

A young professor watched as people filed past a monumental painting in a Texas art museum.

While the gallery showcased dozens of landscapes, portraits, and still lifes, this piece was different.

Towering above the heads of the patrons, the canvas was chock-full of scribbles, splatters, and splotches. The colors were all jumbled together, layer upon layer, without any discernable melody or meaning.

The man listened to the reactions from the crowd as he sat nearby.

“I just don’t understand,” a voice whispered.

“This shouldn’t be here,” another guy said confidently.

Then, one mother, with an entire platoon of small children in tow, shouted loudly, “How is this art? I could do that!

I can’t believe that people think this is some kind of masterpiece!

What is the world coming to? Putting this up in a museum Pfffftt!! It’s insane! $#@##!!!”

She stormed off to the next hall, spewing a thick cloud of expletives as she went. Several tiny toddlers raced to keep up.

Dr. Christensen chuckled at how the woman had such a visceral (and violent) reaction to a painting, even in front of her children.

Years later, the professor relayed this story to his university students.

He warned them not to make snap judgments — “It’s just lazy. You don’t have to like abstract expressionism, but it’s critical that you understand and respect why other people do.”

Then, he spent the next several lectures laying out the history of this flavor of modern art.

He showed videos of Jackson Pollock flinging paint onto a canvas like a sharpshooter.

He also played interviews of Georgia O’Keefe explaining how she spent years drawing upon natural scenes near her home in Santa Fe to create her radically abstract, geometric works.

Gradually the students gained more background knowledge on the subject.

Although not all the students became beret-wearing beatniks, by the end of the semester everyone both understood and respected how someone could love abstract expressionism.