Abstract Art

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Abstract art is such a controversial topic; people tend to either love it or hate it.

So I'm polling NTs on this separately, and I'd like to see how NTs compare with Aspies...

So, please only respond to this poll if you KNOW you are an Aspie. (Meaning even I can't vote on this poll, because I'm not sure if I'm an Aspie or just very Aspie-esque.) But if you're confident in your self-diagnosis, please go for it.

Thanks everybody!

I'm a self identified aspie, but my opinion on abstract art is informed by theory, not mental status. As far as decoration, some of it is quite nice. As far as art, I object to attempts to claim that it's representational of "other realms" or anything similar. Theory wise, I believe it's deconstructing the conceptual realm if it's anything other than decoration. Psychologically, it's a Rorschack test. It can stimulate the imagination, sure, and maybe even evoke a more basic type of emotion. Leonardo da Vinci advised to look at patterns in wall paint and cracks to get ideas, even.

Do I like it? I like pleasing patterns and decorative effects, and I'll indulge in the rorshack game, but can claim nothing more.

I'm diagnosed aspie, and an artist. I like some abstract art visually, some intellectually, some both, and some neither. I myself create realistic figurative work. However, I will often defend abstract art, even that which I don't like. I like to open people's minds and try to help them think about something in a new way. It is a novel concept, even today, for some people, that a "picture" can represent a feeling or an idea, not a recognizable image, and that this is valid.

I absolutely hate it when people say something "isn't art" just because they don't like it. It's the same with rap music. I don't like most of it, but I will defend even the worst rap music from someone who says "it isn't music." Its perfectly alright not to like something, but it is ignorant to disqualify it from the category of expression it belongs to simply because it doesn't fit your tastes.

The way that I personally experience art is that I won't want to read about what anyone else thinks it means or what the artist intended it to 'say'. But sometimes I can just tune into a piece of art and stand staring at it for ages because it seems to represent something inside me that I can't express. Abstract art seems to have the strongest effect on me.

Voted 'neutral', because it's both. Saying I love or hate abstract art is like saying I love or hate winter or summer. Truth is I love and hate (ambivalent combination of incongruent reactions) all these broad catgories of experience. Depends on the particulars, of how I am & what item or event I'm perceiving. "Abstract art" isn't "just one thing" in my mind, it's wide range.
I generally prefer appearance of textures, patterns, doodles to anything figurative or identifiable as subject of "art". (example: Jackson Pollack). Yet, I also get really annoyed & bored by stuff that seems pretentious and looks too simple/indistinct/vague/easy. (example: Mark Rothko).
There are pieces of art that contain communication of interest but are visually uninteresting or repellent-then whatever message (if there is one) seems unlikely to be absorbed. Some stuff is neat to look at & other stuff has something to educate our intellect and/or emotions.

Have painted & still draw. Make mazes by hand-they're more abstract than representational, though have used familiar/conventional outline of letter or shape of planet (maze gets filled in afterwards). Also draw mandalas, geometric & organic stylized doodles with repeating symmetry. I doodle because I can stand to spend many hours doing so & am pretty good at it (I like my creations & so do other people)-not because I'm "saying" anything at all-they're purely decorative in my eyes.

Well, (so far) it looks like Aspies are not intensely loving or hating abstract art, but what I like is how those who have posted are really analyzing it. It's interesting. So far the few NTs I've asked haven't been as analytical, and I haven't gotten a vote of neutral from any NTs yet.

Depends on if theres any point to the artwork at all. Some artists make false claims about that..

There is a lot that is human that a camera could never see.

Non-natural forms, can be very filled with content, or an art school exercise without meaning.

I give it the N, because most photographic art flunks the content test.

I seperate decortive from art.

i'm a painter and do both figurative and abstract art,
although i think my abstracts do have a figurative aspect.

i vote neutral cause i cannot say i love abstract, and certainly not more than figurative.
maybe you'd need some more categories, like 'i like abstract as much as figurative', or 'i like some abstracts but not all'.
what i do dislike is when people do abstract art, just because they are incapable of doing figurative art and then say it was on purpose. this will not influence my judgement of the artwork itself, but more of the artist.

seeing a painting is like entering a world, so i will take every work of art apart and enter it.
it's not because a famous painter is the author of some work that this means i like the work,
even when all i like most of his/her other paintings. this also makes it hard to say i like or hate
abstracts, cause i really dislike some abstracts, and adore others.

I voted yes, assuming that I understand what the poll maker means anything that isn't realistic, representational art.

The term "abstract" is wholly abused when it comes to art. Technically speaking, if art is abstract, it draws from something that can be represented - i.e., it's "abstracting" from something concrete. So in that way it is representational.

I see no reason to criticize people for "explaining" abstract art, since it can be explained to some extent. Ultimately, abstract art is symbolic, and symbols must have meaning to be symbols, even if the meaning is not obvious or is very convoluted or intuitive. You can define a symbol simply as "something that represents something else" and that connection between the symbol and that something else is always an abstraction, regardless to how you derive it. So anything symbolic is going to be abstract, ipso facto, and that's why styles like surrealism or cubism are abstract. Klee, for example, is indeed an abstract artist, probably the best example of one, and most of his work clearly is representing something concrete in an abstract manner. This would hold true of Picasso's abstract works too.

Someone like Pollock or Rothko are better defined as "nonobjective" or "nonrepresentational," perhaps "experiential" (meaning art that can only be experienced and not intellectually understood), even though they are often described by people, including artists and art critics who should know better, as "abstract." Yet there is no abstracting from reality in their nonobjective work - the artwork works on it own set of intrinsic values and doesn't draw off of preset values (symbols) outside of it to give it a context. "It is what it is" so to speak. The irony of this that the more nonobjective this kind of "abstract" art is - especially with someone like Rothko - the more concrete it becomes. And often times people who hate it will describe it as such - "It's just a canvas with red and orange paint smeared on it hung on a wall" - not realizing what they are saying or why. It's almost like people get pissed off because they can't readily "abstract" anything from it (yet these are often the people who claim to hate "abstract" art LOL).

I cant say I Like abstract art

Find it difficult as I love what I find as good abstract art, ignore bad abstract art.
Personally I paint abstract-figurative pieces. Never purely realist as I am not attracted to the representation per se of what is real. I'm concerned with texture, feeling, spirit and that sort of thing. For me neutral would be = ignore or dismiss. Eother a piece "speaks" to me or not this can include "realist" art..... if there are qualities that transcend the mundane representation per se.

All art is abstract. So called representative art fools the eye into believing it is looking at an obje or a scene when, in a painting, it merely is a colored surface with abstract lines and colored two dimensional shapes. Sometimes these patterns are made to represent something. When they are seen as merely pleasing or emotion raising patterns the are labeled abstract. Any cartoon is abstract art.

I love it.

This is the art I like.

Socialist Realism?... j/k...

I can't define it, but I know it when I see it...