Is modern art for you?

Many years ago I completed an arts foundation course with the Open University. One of the tutorials was given by one of the students who happened to be an artist. He wanted us to appreciate that modern art may have a deep meaning that we don't understand and he had brought in five or six canvasses that he had painted. The subject was the Weavers' Triangle in Burnley. It is part of the Leeds Liverpool canal in the centre of the town and includes Victorian mills and chimneys. I also have a vague memory of a clock. The artist showed us a recognisable painting. it looked very nice. The next picture was distorted a little and the next was distorted to a slightly greater extent. When he got to his final canvas the picture had become so distorted that it was just rectangles and squares and straight lines. It was modern art but it was still the Weavers' Triangle.

These picture go a small way to reproducing that lesson. The photo on the left of a sunset in Morecambe Bay is nice enough. As Bill Bryson put it, it is probably the nicest view in Europe. I have missed out a few steps, and I have not arrived at squares and circles but you can get some idea of artistic changes. Like them or not, changes to hue and saturation moves a photo in the direction of modern art.

Happy snapping