There is indeed a split in society about the perspectives and values of art.

The common man on the streets does not actually understand why the art works in the contemporary museums are designated as art and why they are being displayed.

Concrete blocks, accumulations of plastic hoses, empty bottles in display cases and a lot more as I have seen it for example in the Museum “Gallery of the present” in Hamburg, do not actually make any cohesive sense anymore. You would probably have to go through a detailed study of the respective artists in order to understand the art works that were displayed there.

Even for me, who has been dealing with art for 30 years and is basically willing to take any viewpoint in creating art, it is hard to find any plausibility for this kind of artistic creation.

These artists want to basically express chaos, desperation, environmental destruction, hopelessness, suppression and nemesis with their works.

Cultural politicians, museum leaders, art critics and gallery owners regard expressing this today as worthy of support and sponsoring. Millions are being spent on it and new museums are being built. It is the job of museums to buy and exhibit the zeitgeist as expressed by artists in special ways, as well as to preserve these works for future generations.

In order to understand how today’s prevailing art form was developed, we have to look at the development of art for 150 years. At that time the world stood before big technical developments which started to change the sense and use of art. Photography was invented and removed more and more the then highly perfected portrait painting and landscape painting. In addition oil painting was developed to highest perfection, so that advancement for artists was only possible by developing new styles and forms of expression. Impressionism, expressionism and some other style directions originated. At the same time there were also upheavals in the spiritual area when Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis and its theory entered in science and society. Political upheavals which found their first climax with the 1st world war also changed the artists’ creating at that time. Art on one hand became more and more imaginative and due to social circumstances more and more critical. On the other hand it became more and more important to express psychological situations artistically. Psychologically trained people started to comment on art and "explain". Art critics and historians took over this opportunity of interpreting art works. The mental part of an art work moved more and more into the fore and became more important with every decade. The surrealism between 1930 and 1960 was now founded completely on the upcoming psychology. Abstractions in art also had the aim of expressing spiritual and mental feelings. The artists wanted to express the distortions and abysses of the soul while realistic painting was moved more and more into the background. As important and inspiring this development may have been, it departed more and more from the general understanding of art in the society.

Through the special support of art which dealt with exploring the inner life, many artists felt encouraged to express their mentality and emotional abysses, as they would receive support and especially good critics. Two world wars, social upheavals, the disruption of moral and ethics was a good breeding ground for artists to comment on it artistically. Nearly everything that is being depicted in art today is supposed to cause associative thinking; at least they are to be understood as symbols for themes. In addition it became very modern after the second world war to practice criticism. Criticism on society and expressing one’s own mental abyss or those of others was raised to become a cultural asset and found abundant room in the contemporary museums.

Another factor exerted a lot of influence on the creating of art. In the 60s it was discovered that you could attract a lot of attention to yourself with controversy. In the age of the media and mass information this is the method par excellence. In the end every madness is controversial to the process of understanding and so it works well to do something mad, as it guarantees you public attention and as an artist the accordant success. Nowadays it is expected anyway of an artist to have a proneness to insanity. And so that which cannot be understood is controversial, and that which is controversial will generate attention from those who naturally want to understand. And that is especially what we find the cultural scene today: a kind of delirium tremens of association and the controversy raised by excellent PR work to the highest cultural asset.

A rather big number of people visit these exhibitions in museums and indulge into the mysteries of modern artistic work. Only very few are inspired and most go home with a shrug.

In Anderson’s fairy tale of the Emperor’s new clothes, it is an untwisted and unprejudiced child that finally dares to say what everybody also is seeing:

"The emperor is naked!"

Carl-W. Röhrig