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."
Some of what people like critics enjoy comes from just consuming a lot of it. They get more of a sense for what they like and can also start noticing tropes and laziness and bad ideas and work that is too derivative because of this familiarity.
For example, television shows follow various formulas. Part of this is because they're known to create engagement and television is about ad revenue/subscriptions. So of course formulas are followed. Critics don't dislike the existence of formulas in shows, accordingly - but they still use "formulaic" as a dismissive epithet. They notice when a show lacks anything really interesting and is just the money grab or lazy or made purely of old tropes. But if a person had not been exposed to those tropes over and over, they might not notice. They may enjoy the show more than the critic. It might be their favorite - for a while. They aren't wrong to enjoy something like that. But when someone that sees the references and sources borrowed from analyzes it, they appreciate it differently.
An important aspect of this is the extent to which art is unoriginal. Most artists are riffing on what they've learned from others, from other artists they appreciate, from their societies' kitsch, from their political (mis)understanding, from their own lives that are not actually that unique. Often this is in order to make money through familiarity and formulas, but it is also unconscious or because their art culture demands it. This tendency makes art an exercise in derivation, and so to "understand" it you have to get their references. Sometimes they're not obvious and sometimes a reference seems obvious but wasn't intended. That's part of the "game" of art.
Also don't forget that a lot of this is still just capitalism and not as deep as it pretends to be. Many of the references are half understood things presented misleadingly or are homages to actual crap that is built on literally nothing but hype. Or mediocrity that is nothing but hype - not bad, but not appreciated for its inherent aesthetics or meaning. For example, the Mona Lisa was not particularly famous for its quality or meaning, these were properties assigned after it became famous for being stolen. This also applies yo the market value of art, though that is even more tangled, as art can also be a money laundering / financialized asset racket.
Anyways you don't under any circumstances have to "enjoy" art any differently than you already do, but to "appreciate" what some others see all you need to do is consume a lot of it abd learn the history and context.