Because good taste begins the moment one stops trying to look intelligent.
To Be or Not to Be… Pretentious
Paris. A romantic getaway. Two o’clock at the Louvre.
What could be more romantic? What more sophisticated way to demonstrate the depth of your soul than standing together, quietly awestruck, before the world’s most famous painting?
You have waited. You have squeezed through the tourists. And now, finally, the Mona Lisa is here — behind bulletproof glass, surrounded by thousands of cameras and art lovers from around the world.
You stare.
You take your picture.
And somewhere beneath the weight of the moment, a small, traitorous thought appears:
Isn't she… a bit small?
The confusion, it turns out, is universal. It follows us from the great museums of Europe to the trendy galleries of emerging art cities.
Ho Chi Minh City. Eight o’clock. A gallery in Thao Dien.
You’ve been invited to the hottest exhibition opening in town — the kind where people attend as much to see as to be seen.
Long gone are the days when status was measured by flashy displays of wealth; such vulgarity now often suggests a lack of substance. Here, prestige signals itself differently: through thoughtful squints, slow nods, and the sort of grave attention usually reserved for inheritance documents. All directed toward a large canvas filled with nothing but abstract strokes of colour.
You oscillate between self-consciousness and skepticism.
Is the work a masterpiece, or is the champagne simply doing the heavy lifting? Am I missing something?
In the art world, the distinction is often delightfully blurry.
Many curious thoughts threaten to escape.
But squinting and nodding, you decide, might be the safer strategy.
Darling. We have all been there.
Why Bother… At All?
Let us begin with the obvious: learning to appreciate art is not, strictly speaking, necessary.
No one’s life has ever been ruined by failing to appreciate Vincent van Gogh — though the artist himself suffered considerably in the making of it.
And yet.
There is a reason art has long drawn the attention of people with taste and intellectual curiosity. It is not merely pretension — though pretension certainly plays its part.
It is that art, properly attended to, adds substance to life.
Let us begin with the worldly reasons, because pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
Learning how to read an artwork allows you to move comfortably through cultural spaces, navigating conversations across different circles and opening doors that were once discreetly closed. It gives you something to say at dinner parties that may leave a stronger impression than even the most impeccable couture.
Couture gets you through the door; culture keeps you in the room.
For collectors, the rewards are even more alluring. A thoughtfully built collection is never merely decoration. Done well, it quietly compounds several forms of capital at once:
• Social capital — connections, networks, access
• Cultural capital — knowledge and taste
• Symbolic capital — objects of meaning and prestige worth passing down
• Economic capital — assets that may appreciate in value, occasionally aided by tax structures that behave surprisingly kindly toward art
These are practical advantages — and perfectly respectable ones.
But something far more valuable happens if you keep the habit long enough.
Eventually, those initial motivations begin to lose their sparkle. The novelty of social performance wears thin. Status and material rewards become secondary (yes, absurdly enough).
You begin to see beauty everywhere: in light, colour, composition, and the small details that once passed unnoticed. The world becomes more interesting — as it often reflects the growing depth of one’s inner life.
Art has a peculiar way of revealing thoughts and feelings you did not know you carried — or perhaps had carefully buried. It opens doors to parts of the mind that everyday life rarely visits.
Most importantly, it encourages curiosity of the mind and empathy of the heart. Every artwork is a window into another mind, another time, another culture.
What often begins with rather superficial incentives gradually becomes a gateway to a far more authentic inner world.
The Art of Looking
The art of looking begins where the performance of knowing ends.
When was the last time you met someone interesting and immediately asked for their CV?
Imagine walking into a dinner party, being introduced to a fascinating stranger, and responding with:
“Impressive. Now tell me about your education, your family background, your approximate net worth, and whether institutions have validated your achievements.”
An effective approach, one might argue, if the goal is growing your LinkedIn network soullessly at corporate events.
But the art world is anything but soulless.
Or at least, it prefers to appear that way.
And yet this is exactly how most of us approach art.
We walk into a gallery. We approach a painting. And before we have truly looked at it, we read the wall label. We check the artist’s name, the date, the movement, the provenance, even the price. We search for the answer before we have even registered the question.
When our experience does not match the expert description, we assume the failure is ours. We blame our lack of cultural knowledge or aesthetic instinct — a supposed lack of sophistication. Slowly, we begin to distrust our own taste.
In reality, appreciating art is much simpler.
It is a conversation between three things:
You.
The artwork.
And the story behind it.
Three layers, nothing more.
First: What do you see?
Not what you think you should see. What is actually there.
Colours. Shapes. Lines. Light. Space. A flash of red. A shadow in the corner. A brushstroke thick enough to almost touch.
Everything begins here.
Second: What do you feel?
Calm? Confused? Electrified? Bored? Irritated?
Your emotional response is not wrong. It is not a failure. It is simply information.
The painting has done something to you — even if that something is indifference.
Notice it. Name it. Trust it.
Third: What do you learn?
Only now should you read the label.
Who made this? When? Why? What was happening in the world at the time?
This is not an answer key. It is context. It adds depth to what you have already seen and felt — rather like learning a friend’s life story after you have already enjoyed their company.
The Emperor’s New Clothes: A Contemporary Tale
Growing up in London, I was a rather spoiled child in the world’s most magnificent candy store — if the candy happened to be six centuries of Western art.
A casual walk could lead into the National Gallery, where Titian and Caravaggio hang as though such beauty were entirely ordinary. A few streets away, the Wallace Collection offers rooms filled with Rococo elegance — all gilt and grace. Then there was the National Portrait Gallery and the Courtauld.
There were too many masterpieces to count, and they were too close to ever feel rare. Because these works formed my earliest standard of art, I felt little urge to explore much beyond them — or, at the time, beneath them.
Their beauty seemed obvious: Balanced compositions. Extraordinary honed technique. Grand stories drawn from religion, mythology, and history.
You do not need to know why Michelangelo is good.
You can simply see that he is.
Masterpieces are easy to love. They require no explanation.
Contemporary art, on the other hand — particularly abstract movements — often seemed to raise eyebrows.
To my younger self, appreciating works that resembled a three-year-old’s enthusiastic encounter with paint felt like an offence to the discipline and craft of classical art. Surely this was the Emperor’s New Clothes.
And I was no fool.
Until one afternoon at the Museum of Modern Art during a trip to New York.
After a long day wandering the Upper East Side and exploring the museum scene, my aching feet begged for rest. Any bench would do. The one I found happened to sit directly in front of a painting by Mark Rothko.
I had seen Rothko many times before and felt absolutely nothing.
Though a deliberate contemplation would tell a more noble story, my gaze at the abstract painting began largely from simply spacing out.
Two minutes. Five minutes.
Time blurred.
Then something unexpected happened.
Before I realised it, tears began to fall unconsciously, unexplainably and uncontrollably.
The vast red fields of the painting began to feel like a mirror reflecting something buried deep inside me — emotions so quietly hidden that even my rational mind could not quite comprehend.
Only afterwards did I begin reading about Rothko and Abstract Expressionism.
These artists were not trying to paint objects or tell stories in the traditional sense. Instead, they used shapes, colour, scale, and atmosphere to evoke the instinctive of human emotional states directly.
Rather like non lyrical music, the work was never meant to be understood in a literal way.
It was meant to open a door.
To allow the viewer to bring their own emotions and memories into the experience, and to discover what the work might hold.
The movement I had dismissed as aesthetically and intellectually beneath my taste was not the problem.
My ignorance was.
Which is perhaps why the best works do not flatter our taste so much as refine it.
What to Do the Next Time You Stand Before a Painting
If all of this sounds rather abstract, here is a simple guide for navigating your next encounter with art.
1. Observe — Just Look
Give the artwork two full minutes.
No phone. No label. No agenda.
Let your eyes wander. What do you notice first?
2. Analyse — How Is It Built?
Now look more closely at the craft.
Composition — where does your eye travel?
Colour and light — warm or cool, dramatic or calm?
Texture — smooth surfaces or visible brushstrokes?
3. Interpret — What Might Be Happening?
Combine what you see with what you feel.
What mood does the work create? What story might it suggest?
There is rarely a single correct answer. Picasso once admitted he often discovered what his paintings meant years after he made them.
You are allowed to guess.
4. Contextualise — Who, When, Why
Now read the label.
Who made the work? What was happening historically? Are there symbols or references that add another layer?
This step deepens the conversation.
5. Reflect — Make It Yours
Has your feeling changed?
Would you tell a friend about this piece?
For collectors, the most interesting works are rarely the most expensive ones. They are the ones that remain in your mind long after you have left the room.
Quick Guide for the Culturally Curious
Observe — two minutes. Just look.
Analyse — composition, colour, light, texture.
Interpret — mood, story, your reaction.
Contextualise — artist, era, meaning.
Reflect — what stays with you.
The Pleasure of Looking
The true pleasure of looking begins once the performance of looking ends.
When the anxiety of appreciating art correctly disappears, a far more seductive pleasure appears: the amusement of engagement itself — visual, emotional, intellectual.
From there comes curiosity. And from curiosity, taste.
Taste, contrary to popular belief, is not the same thing as instant expertise. It is simply the confidence to form an opinion of one’s own — in art, as in everything else worth having.
One day, a painting will follow you out of the room.
Not because you have mastered its theory, nor because you can quote the wall text over dinner, but because something in it has lodged itself quietly in your mind.
A colour.
A tension.
A mood.
An emotional attachment you cannot quite explain, but would be sorry to lose.
That, incidentally, is often how appreciation becomes collecting.
Not with millions of dollars to spare.
Not with an art history degree.
But with a work that lingers — and the decision to take that feeling seriously.
So the next time you find yourself standing before a painting, resist the urge to look intelligent.
Look longer instead.
Let the work reach you before you decide what you think of it.
You may not leave feeling like an art critic.
But you may leave with something better:
a sharper eye,
a more curious mind,
and perhaps the quiet beginning of a collection.
