You don’t need to “understand” anything about art, to appreciate or derive something from it. I’ve got a large amount of joy and interesting perspectives from art, I wouldn't claim to understand much of it.
That's the thing about art, it’s interpretation is entirely our own, it doesn’t need to be understood or explained.
A world without art, would be that little less bright.
Which is all very well, but why then should people pay for it whether they appreciate/understand/get a new perspective or not, or indeed live too far away to ever even see it?
I'm not arguing there should be no support of the arts, but that if we expect people to pay for it, it needs to be accessible to a wide range of people. That's not to say everything should appeal to everyone, but to make sure the criteria for funding are transparent, so it doesn't end up being a group of people convincing everyone else they're somehow experts, and handing other people's money to each other. It's also incumbent on these experts to be able to communicate why these decisions are made, rather than dismissing people who ask too many questions.
This is another reason in my mind to divert money from big galleries into community projects: it increases contact between "artists" and normal people and makes the "experts" accountable.
We need this precisely so that support for the arts will continue, because if increasing numbers of people begin to feel alienated, then the result will be that nothing gets any support, and we will then be poorer for it.
