When I was a teen, my dad and brother went to visit the Tate Modern together in order to fulfil the need to at least say they have been to one of the most revered galleries in their hometown. But the experience, as is the experience of most people (most = majority), is that they 'don't get modern art'. They came back to make fun of the art as ridiculous - 'a white square on a white square? What the fuck is that?" To be clear, I don't think these are unreasonable feelings. To enjoy modern art, you need to know the context and prerequisite knowledge to appreciate why Malevich's 'white on white' is inspiring. Without the context, it's a white square painted on a white square.

Given this episode happened in my teenage years where my opinions were merely a byproduct of the opinions of others, I too adopted the stance that modern art was bullshit and the Tate Modern is a joke. It was only years later when I started to dive into modern art for myself that I began to understand the pieces that before I'd auto-classified as arbitrary. I feel sad that something that has become such a core part of my inspiration in life took me many more years to discover than it needed to. I feel it is fundamentally important that modern art bridges the knowledge gap between the few and the majority, to broaden its scope and inspire many more. To that end, the following analogy is to equip art lovers with an explanation of modern art that connects with those sceptical of it.

To understand modern art, all you need to do is understand how flags work. Take a look at the flags below:

‍

What emotions does the left flag deliver? Not much. Some weird alien ship, that's about it. It doesn't make you feel much or give you any sense of wonderment or beauty. It is void of any feeling - it's just some blue, red and white.

The middle flag and the right flag however will evoke an enormous range of emotions. For the US flag, it has been built on the backs of centuries of struggle to create a free nation. People dedicate their lives to protecting it, and if necessary will die for that flag. It is so meaningful that Congress has tried to make destroying a cloth with this design illegal. For the Nazi flag, terror, fear and injustice hit you. You are fully aware of what sits behind the meaning of this flag and it can bring one to tears.

There is nothing about the colours or shapes of the flags that deliver those emotions. The red, blue and white of the left flag is no different from the red, white and blue of the US flag. The red of the Nazi flag doesn't have any different cognitive trigger on your brain than the reds of the American flag. The jagged lines of the swastika don't inherently mean anything. All flags are just red, white and blue. We, meaning your brain, give them meaning. When you see these flags, it's a trigger for all the information you know about what the flags represent that are incredibly powerful, not the design of the flags.

When most people see modern art, they see the flag on the left. An unrecognisable, boring object that does nothing for the soul. But when you discover that it's the flag of Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire and that seeing it was a leading indicator that you and your whole family were about to be killed and everything you ever knew was about to be burned to the ground, you might start to have different emotions when you look at it again. Flags are symbols of freedom or terror or struggle or life. The best modern art, in my opinion, is exactly the same. It's not the colours or the shapes that one experiences - it's what the art symbolises - freedom or terror or struggle or life.

If you are someone that, like I was, thinks modern art is bullshit, recognise that you see all modern art as the left flag. The only difference between the left flag versus the others is what you know about them. None of them are any 'better' than the other as a symbol, they just symbolise different things. For the best artists, there's almost always a path to turn them from boring to inspiring with a little bit of context.

If you are someone that loves art and has a tough time encouraging friends or family, recognise that they see the left flag, whilst you see the middle/left flags. That's not anyone's fault and they are absolutely valid for feeling nothing. You studied Mongol Imperial history at school and they chose a different module.

If you are someone that loves art and is critiquing work, make sure that you aren't critiquing the left flag without knowing anything about it. To experience the work, you need to know a lot more information than just looking at it - in the same way you can't assess the power of the Mongol Imperial flag without knowing more about its history.

If the object of modern art is to share ideas and evoke emotions, and the best modern art shares the most powerful ideas and the most intense emotions, you could argue that flags are examples of the best modern art. The symbolic nature of flags is something we all understand and if you understand flags, then you understand modern art.