I really like the story of the boy who asks his mother: "Why did you put this picture on the wall?". "To make it beautiful", the mother replies. "And why doesn't he?", replies the boy. This is ironic because I have just visited 28 art galleries in three days in Madrid and, in more than one, I asked myself the same question as the boy. And it is that contemporary art breaks away from traditional notions of art and beauty and challenges all the rules.
In its day cubism already broke with everything known until then and society considered the paintings of Picasso, Braque and Gris to be horrible. Van Gogh sold only one painting in his life. Not only was he misunderstood, but he was called crazy. Andy Warhol - today his works are worth millions - began to be strongly criticized.
It is true that nowadays the main buyers of art are Chinese and that they love children's images, taken from story books or comics. That's why so many contemporary artists use these more comic book images. This was already done by Roy Lichtenstein, but his paintings have another much more powerful message, such as denouncing wars, violence, etc. So he pulls out his war comic book images.
Art buyers prefer the known to the unknown, and each new movement has taken years to gain acceptance. But sooner or later art with capital letters is recognized and admired. Probably because it creates feelings that are sometimes not pleasant, but rather make us indignant or sad. And Goya understood this very well when he painted The Disasters of War.
On the other hand, photography is experiencing an extraordinary development, probably because each of us takes many more photos than before and appreciates more a good photo taken by a professional artist. Photography already occupies an important place in world contemporary art and the great photographers are already starting to charge prices comparable to those of the great painters.
