Agreed. And the more self-consciously a work is created (i.e., “it believes itself to be profound”) usually the less important and impactful it becomes. That’s another reason that there is alotta junk out there.

Two responses. First one needs to separate the market from the work/artist. Second, let me tell you a Pollock story (I used to teach art history):

I had a student discuss Pollock with me. She said that the more random and chaotic she tried to be, the less she liked the work that resulted. She said that only when she started to approach action painting with a predetermined structure (what colors she would use, the order and method of their application, etc.) only then she said was she more satisfied witht her result. She said: “It wasn’t Pollock, but it was better than I had been producting before.”

Now. let me give you another parallel: Today, any mathematician can solve for E=MC^2. Should they receive the same accolades as Einstein? Of course not, because Einstein noticed and was able to codify this relationship when no one else could. Likewise, Pollock. It could be said that Pollock represents, not an image, but the act of painting itself, kind of like footprints in the snow. Like Einstein, he was finding new and different relationships on the painted surface when no one else could or would. Even if anyone could reproduce Pollock’s work, should they get the acclaim that Pollock has? (” . . .many of the very inexpensive artworks they had for sale were approaching or just as good as some of the work done by big name artists . . . . [Snow on Pine @ 1:58 pm]).That is what sets Pollock apart. Furthermore,Pollock’s paintings, while random and chaotic in appearance, have been identified as having an underlying fractal structure.* I find that fascinating (“. . . I really got “into” his art when I came to the realization that he was painting nature, or more precisely micro-nature . . . . [Barry Meislin @10:09 am]).

In the art world, there are more people producing work than ever before in human history. There is always mediocre work and junk, ands it follows that there will be more of that now. And there is no question that there is a certain status and snob appeal in the art market and the art world that rewards change, anarchy, and vulgarity just for its own sake (“Modern art tends to be nihilistic in nature. It’s currently using the America Bad narrative with the usual sub-narratives” [GRA @ 12:19]). This is an unfortunate reality of out times and as art is a cultural fingerprint, it says something about the times in which we now live (see my coment at 7:08 pm above).

*links to Pollock’s fractal qualities:

(Note: The easiest way to think about the fractal nature of Pollock’s work is to notice that if you take a visual detail of his painting you have another independent Pollock painting rather than just a detail of the whole)

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/pollocks-fractals

https://www.jackson-pollock.com/jackson-pollock-drip.html

Agreed. Even tragic art.

Australian man of letters Clive James quoted Philip Larkin’s famous objection to Modernism in the arts in a 1981 essay: “Modernism, according to [Philip] Larkin, ‘helps us neither to enjoy nor endure’. He defines modernism as intellectualised art. Against intellectualism he proposes, not anti-intellectualism—which would be just another coldly willed programme—but trust in the validity of emotion.” (Source: https://archive.clivejames.com/books/larkwit.htm)

Purpose of art = “to help us enjoy [and] endure.” Works for me. I might also say, “to add to the world’s store of beauty.” Which is basically the same thing.

(FWIW, I really got “into” his art when I came to the realization that he was painting nature, or more precisely micro-nature…though not, to be sure, “from nature”…. That is, not so much a landscape painter as a painter of the chaos of nature…etc., etc….)

(So how to explain my love for (the more mature) Rothko…? OK, well, um, atmospherics? Sunsets and skies? The classical EMOTION of nature?? In-the-beginning…creation? E.g., the second and third days…?)

It’s rap music to a piece by, say, Monteverdi.

Moreover, art, it seems to me, should be uplifting, not depressing.

Get a ladder, several gallons of different colored paints, a drop cloth or canvas, and drop or splatter away.

At a couple of hundred perhaps it “says something to you”–it’s a Rorshach test that you can read all sorts of things into–but thousands, tens, or even hundreds of thousands?

Yes, bragging rights and status signaling,* but also because, whether you like it or not, you think it might/will increase in value (the irony here is that the less you like it the easier it is let it go in a sale). You should buy what you like because you will probably be looking at it for a long time.

*This, BTW, is a recurring theme in the Frasier series.

Bragging rights?