what do you actually like about it

April 30, 2026

One of the stranger things about art is how quickly people outsource their eyes.

They do not always mean to. Sometimes it happens through trend.

Sometimes through branding.

Sometimes through the quiet social relief of liking what has already been approved.

A piece is popular, or recognizably “artistic,” or attached to a look people already understand, and suddenly a whole room agrees it is good.

Maybe it is.

But that is not the same as understanding why.

I have been thinking about this because I do not believe the commercial market defines art, and I do not believe it defines the artist.

The market can create visibility. It can assign a price. It can reward timing, familiarity, and saleability. It can tell us what is moving. It can tell us what people are buying. It can even tell us what a particular moment wants reflected back to it in flattering lighting.

What it cannot do is give us depth.

What it cannot do is teach discernment.

If we are talking about commercial forms of art, I think the more interesting question is not simply whether you like them. It is whether you know what you like beyond trend.

Do you know if it is the line?

The tension?

The negative space?

The composition?

The restraint?

The distortion?

The emotional tone?

The material?

The way the piece holds something back?

The way it creates atmosphere without overexplaining itself?

Because that is where the conversation gets real.

A lot of people think they are responding to art when they are really responding to recognition. They are responding to what has already been approved, already circulated, already translated into something easy to consume. They are responding to familiarity dressed up as taste.

That is not a moral failure.

It is just a limitation.

Trend teaches recognition.

Understanding teaches discernment.

Those are not the same thing.

And discernment matters.

To me, artistic understanding begins where passive liking ends. It begins when you start asking better questions.

Not just, do I like this?

But why?

What is happening here?

What is the work actually doing?

How is it using form, material, colour, absence, tension, repetition, gesture, proportion, softness, force?

What is the artist controlling, and what are they deliberately allowing to remain unresolved?

That is the part that interests me.

Because art is rarely only the image at first glance. It is also the choices beneath it. The decisions. The omissions. The way the thing is built. The way it holds pressure.

That is why I keep coming back to modality.

For me, modality matters more than market value.

Not because technique is the whole point, but because technique reveals relationship. It shows whether someone understands the medium they are working with. Whether they know what it can hold. Whether they can use form, texture, depth, movement, proportion, composition, value, and restraint in service of something deeper than surface appeal.

That matters.

That is literacy.

That is not a person stumbling into something attractive by accident. That is someone developing a relationship with material, with form, with seeing itself.
And I think we flatten art when we ignore that.

We also flatten artists when we use the market as the only proof that they exist.
I understand why people do it. Commercial validation is neat. It is legible. It gives people a simple test.

Have you sold anything?

Are you exhibiting?

Are you commissioned?

Is there demand?

Is there a price attached?

Is this real yet?

But those questions belong to commerce, not to origin.

The market may confirm an artist in the eyes of people who need that kind of evidence.

It does not create one.

The same is true of the work itself. A piece does not become meaningful because it sells. It becomes easier to categorize.

There is a difference.

Some of the most interesting work is not immediately legible. It may not fit cleanly into trend. It may not flatter the viewer. It may not feel tidy enough for commercial appetite.

It may ask more of the eye.

More of the nervous system.

More of the person standing in front of it.

And that matters too.

Because art is not only decoration, and taste is not only trend adoption with better packaging.

There is more happening than what the market has decided to highlight.

There is form.

There is mood.

There is sensibility.

There is depth.

There is the felt intelligence of a piece.

There is the part of the work that comes from study, practice, modality, and a way of seeing that has become its own language over time.

That is what I am interested in.

Not whether something is already approved, but whether it is alive.

Not whether it is obviously sellable, but whether it is doing something.

Not whether it photographs well for a polished square on the internet, but whether it carries tension, atmosphere, presence, and thought.

And I think the same question belongs to viewers.

What do you actually like about it?

Not what are you supposed to like.

Not what has already been validated for you.

Not what fits the current aesthetic economy.

What do you actually respond to?

Can you name it?

Can you see it?

Can you separate your own eye from trend long enough to know what is really pulling you in?

That is where a more serious relationship with art begins.

Because art deserves more than first glance.

It deserves more than commercial shorthand.

And so do artists.

The market can price the work.

It can circulate the work.

It can sometimes reward the work.

But it cannot tell us everything that matters about it.

It cannot tell us what is deeply seen.

It cannot tell us what is formally intelligent.

It cannot tell us what is emotionally true.

It cannot measure the felt intelligence of a piece.

And it certainly cannot tell us whether a person becomes an artist only after someone else decides the work is sellable.

Sellable is not the same as seen.

Trend is not the same as understanding.

And liking something is only the beginning.

The better question is still the harder one:

What do you actually like about it?