Published on 12, July, 2020
Ok, there's a decent chance this one's just me, but I'm curious.
I don't get art. I understand making it as an outlet, and I can appreciate beauty. However when I look at a painting/sculpture etc, I don't 'feel' anything. Either it looks pretty or it doesn't, it's done with skill or it's not. This seems to span all genres/movements.
As this is a sort of perception thing, and to do with connecting emotionally, I wondered whether it may be ASD related. Does anyone else feel the same? Negative responses welcome as this is just a point of interest, I'm not looking for reassurance.
I enjoy looking at art, and a fair few of the books in my collection are art books, though I don't get to galleries very much these days. I'm not sure that I really emotionally connect with art, though. I think I enjoy it more as a kind of visual stimming, just for the effects that the colours, patterns, textures, etc. make on my mind. There is a lot of figurative art that I do like, but I tend to enjoy abstract art more - and when I dabbled in a bit of painting myself, I mainly painted abstracts. I also have a liking for art where the "message" is more of an idea than a feeling - things like M.C.Escher's prints of impossible geometry, or Magritte's games with how we perceive images.
However, I can get much the same pleasure from poring over a well drawn map or engineering drawing, and I enjoy dabbling with software for drawing fractals derived purely from mathematical equations. So I don't really distinguish between art which is meant to have emotional content and images which aren't meant to have any at all.
Yes, I'm fascinated by illusion type images too! I much prefer geometric shapes and patterns over looking at anything else, I think I feel more comfortable with those too because I'm not expected to take anything else from them. I probably have never really appreciated art becuase I'm too busy looking for what it is I'm missing... am glad you can get past that and enjoy the images for what they are.