The “Unusual Art” internet group is one of many places online where people can share and discuss various artistic endeavors. While the topic is somewhat niche, it boasts a healthy 59 thousand users, all interested in the “weirder” side of art. Some artists who end up having their works rejected from other groups will also post them here, so give “Unusual Art” a follow, if that sounds right in your wheelhouse.

While perceptions of beauty will vary, we do have a fascination with the unusual. In the early 20th century, when artists started to experiment with more “strange” styles and images, there was pushback from some segments of society. People, used to generally realistic images of nature, people, and so on were now encountering abstract and sometimes unsettling images that were downright hard to label. 

Artists pushed back, as many believed that photography had made “realistic” painting completely unnecessary. So the role of the artist was to create art, not just a visual depiction. Clement Greenberg, an American essayist, summed it up nicely in a 1960s article: “Realistic, naturalistic art had dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art; modernism used art to call attention to art. The limitations that constitute the medium of painting—the flat surface, the shape of the support, the properties of the pigment—were treated by the Old Masters as negative factors that could be acknowledged only implicitly or indirectly. Under Modernism, these same limitations came to be regarded as positive factors, and were acknowledged openly.”

Most people see this debate as a question of beauty, and modern art no longer values beauty is the traditional response. However, this overlooks the reality that even the “old masters” could and would depict events that were hardly beautiful in any sense of the word. Francisco Goya, who painted in the 17th century, depicted, for example, French soldiers shooting Spanish captives. 

This just goes to illustrate the difficulty we have when it comes to accurately describing beauty and how it makes us feel. It's “in the eye of the beholder," yet most people can find common elements that they find visually appealing, like turquoise water on a clean, sandy beach. But at the same time, tastes will differ in nearly every aspect of our lives, from music, to film to literal taste. 

But these sorts of debates on beauty overlook the fact that art doesn’t just exist to reveal beauty. In some sense, this is an egoistic way to see it, as often enough we just happen to be observers of what an artist has felt compelled to create. Some researchers argue that to create is just human nature, as we are the only animal that just does it. There are examples in nature of animals creating non-functional structures, but these tend to be part of a mating ritual. But who is to say that impressing others wasn’t the origin of our own artistic drives?