Here’s where I sound really naive about art, but a lot for me has boiled down to keeping an open mind. I’ve had a lot of experiences similar to robardin’s where I’ve gone years simply not getting something only to have an enlightening experience or simply just coming to appreciate a particular artist or art form.
I never understood the popularity of Salvador Dali, in fact his stuff got on my nerves a lot with its phatasmagorical quality. Then my husband and I happened to go to the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, which happens to have a huge collection of Dali originals, and we just *happened *to be grouped with a docent who had an encyclopedic knowledge and appreciation of Dali, his influences, and just amazing information. It was nearly spiritual experience. You truly can’t appreciate some of these works without seeing them in the originals. Dali was a genius.
I had a similar, but less intense, reaction when seeing Jasper Johns’ White Flag in a museum in Washington.