So like...idk I'm not sure how to explain this.
I can enjoy art, and I can appreciate and respect art. But like...I don't know how to enjoy things "abstractly" per se?
What i mean is that I like reading and movies and paintings and such. But I can't enjoy "classics" per se. Nor can I enjoy Avant-garde art. But I can respect both. I want to enjoy both too. I've tried reading both Le Miserables and dream of the red chamber but both times ive put them down fairly quickly (although the dream of the red chamber book I was reading was a fairly old translation, so maybe that was it). Ive also tried reading some poems out of Vladimir Mayakovsky's "the backbone flute" but they havent ellicted and reaction from me. And I really, really respect avant-garde work. I would rather someone like Yoko Ono be successful over Blake Shelton, because Blake Shelton makes the most generic crap, while Yoko Ono actually tries to make things different and interesting.
But I kinda would rather listen to Blake Shelton (obviously if I have broader choice I'm picking someone like Woody Gunthrie or Phil Ochs, but if it was between Shelton and Ono, it'd be a tough choice).
So I guess my main question is how do people enjoy art in the "abstract" way (again, I know that's not a good term but idk what else to call it)? Because I see critics and such wax lyrically about this stuff and they seem to really enjoy it so I wanna enjoy art like that too, beyond "oh it's pretty" or "oh its fun."
Mm, I think this is fair
One small thing I want to respond to, it wasn't just european classics. Dream of the Red Chamber is a Chinese classic (one of the classic novels). And now thinking about it I've also read Natsume Soseki's kokoro. Although I think that too I had issues with the more subliminal/metaphorical messaging in that book, even though I enjoyed it quite a lot. What I'm saying is that I wasnt just trying to read the western classics. But western classics should have some merit to them, as for example Xi Jinping has credited Faust as one of the many books he has read and enjoyed in his life. But of course I'll diversify as much as I can (that I can find in languages I can actually read).
You're very correct in what you say about artistic geniuses and what not. This isn't even just the case in art. For example, Nobel prize winner Richard Feynmann (probably misspelling that) was genuinely a good physicist and science communicator. But he had this myth built up around him and his personality, where he made being a physicist look easy and like you should always be the smartest and most confident person in the world, and that you shouldn't care what the world thinks of you. But after he died, they pulled out boxes upon boxes of research and papers and such that he used and studied because being a physicist is genuinely very hard work, which you aren't gifted with overnight.