> After Emily left I checked on the internet and it turns out she was right, you really do just look at it, that’s all!
Well, that's one way of doing it, and it's what most people do, but you're not going to get the most out of it.
Rothko's Four Seasons murals are a good example - big slabs of colour, nothing too complicated. But then when you find out that he said ...
> "I accepted this assignment with strictly malicious intentions," Rothko said. "I hope to ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room." He wanted his paintings to make them feel that they were trapped in the room "where all the doors and windows are bricked up, so that all they can do is butt their heads forever against the wall."
That line of offence more applicable to jokes than to art. Not all art is meant to be consumed easily and without context. In fact, I'd argue that if a piece of art CAN be consumed easily by anyone of any background without any context, then that piece will usually be rather obvious and just not very interesting, insightful, or valuable.
Of course, take that with a grain of salt. There's a rather large area between 'obvious' and 'unintelligible', and plenty of authors have tried (and failed) to elevate the artistic value of their pieces by turning them into useless mazes of obscure data.
Likewise, when I post a sloppy, obscene comment, silly people without culture might get confused.
What they don't know is that I want the readers to feel like they're in a novel of Liselotte Hupenblum, where angry, half-finished gargoyles bark humiliating gibberish at them.
Well, that's one way of doing it, and it's what most people do, but you're not going to get the most out of it.
Rothko's Four Seasons murals are a good example - big slabs of colour, nothing too complicated. But then when you find out that he said ...
> "I accepted this assignment with strictly malicious intentions," Rothko said. "I hope to ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room." He wanted his paintings to make them feel that they were trapped in the room "where all the doors and windows are bricked up, so that all they can do is butt their heads forever against the wall."
... you get a better appreciation for them.