The Innocence of Art.

I find that among art contemporaries, the most preferred artwork is that which suggests a childlike quality to the piece and artist.  These works have simple lines, and often very few colors.  If not a minimal, the colors are often muted, allowing the viewer to focus primarily on the simple subject matter that the artist chose to capture.  For most part, the childlike pieces are portraits of everyday people.

To interject for a moment, when I reference contemporaries, I mean it in the sense that artists and art critics ranging from twenty to thirty years of age.  I have been curious about this affinity that young adults have for such credulous pieces that older art viewers have omitted from their aesthetic acceptance.  What I can best understand is that the association with art appreciation is linked primarily with the classical 

nature of academic paintings and early modern works.  Younger critics, as a general proposition, have a wider visual appreciation for works of art.  With these pieces, specifically, younger critics associate these childlike pieces with the innocence of younger days, and the mesmerizing affect that art develops and all the possibilities that are available for creation.

At least it has that effect on me.

Childlike may be the wrong word, and simple may be more suiting.  The basic nature of the works of art do not overwhelm the viewer, but rather leave their mind free to think more about why the artist created the work and what intentions they had when others saw it.  It seems that classical works focus so much on glasslike surfaces, leaving the viewer feeling a need to be proper when viewing it.  If the work is not to an academic style, the motion of the brushstrokes cause the viewer to focus on just the technique executed.  While there is no doubt that this is a primary aspect of artwork, the viewer should be allowed to take more from the piece.

Artists worth checking out:

rina miriam drescher. corcoise. matthew gray gubler. yoshimoto nara.