There’s a peculiar silence that falls over museum galleries. People drift past canvases, their faces carefully composed into expressions of thoughtful appreciation. They pause at the little plaques, absorbing what they’re supposed to think, what the experts have determined is important. And then they move on, often without ever asking themselves the most essential question: What do I think about this?
We’ve somehow arrived at a strange place in our relationship with art, where having an opinion feels presumptuous. As if art exists in a rarified space where only the properly educated, the culturally initiated, are permitted to judge. But this reverent silence isn’t just unfortunate – it’s antithetical to what art actually is.
Consider what happens when we strip away personal response from art. What remains? A historical artifact. A technical demonstration. Perhaps an investment vehicle. These things have their place, certainly, but they’re not art in its fullest sense. Art becomes art in the moment of encounter, in that electric instant when a human being stands before a work and feels something – anything – stir within them.
The Impressionists were once ridiculed. Critics called their work unfinished, amateurish, an assault on proper painting. Today we queue for hours to see those same “assaults.” What changed? Not the paintings. What changed was that enough people trusted their own eyes, their own emotional responses, and said: “Actually, I think this is beautiful. I think this captures something true about how light really looks, how a moment really feels.”
Every artistic revolution has been powered not by institutional approval but by individuals willing to say, “I see something here that matters, even if no one else does yet.”
When you stand before a painting, your nervous system responds before your intellect catches up. Your pupils dilate or contract. Your heart rate shifts. Memories surface unbidden. This isn’t negotiable – it happens whether you have an art history degree or whether you’ve never set foot in a gallery before. Your body is having an opinion even if your mind hasn’t caught up yet.
This physiological response is valid data. It’s not less real or less important than the curator’s interpretation or the critic’s analysis. In fact, it’s arguably more fundamental. The art historian can tell you about brushwork and composition, about historical context and artistic lineage. These insights are valuable. But they cannot tell you what it feels like to be you, encountering this work, in this moment of your life.
Your opinion is the only one that comes from your particular constellation of experiences, your specific way of seeing the world. When you withhold it, you’re not being humble – you’re depriving the world of a unique perspective that can never be replicated.
Forming an opinion about art is itself a creative act. It requires you to synthesize sensation, emotion, memory and thought into something coherent. It asks you to trust yourself enough to say, “This is my truth, even if it’s different from yours.”
This is why children are often better at engaging with art than adults. They haven’t yet learned to doubt their responses. A child will stand before a Jackson Pollock and say, “It looks like someone had fun” or “This makes me feel dizzy” or “I don’t like it – it’s too messy.” These aren’t sophisticated analyses, but they’re honest encounters. They’re real opinions formed from genuine response rather than borrowed authority.
Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, many of us learn to mistrust these immediate reactions. We learn to wait for someone to tell us what we should think. We mistake education for abdication, as if learning about art means surrendering our right to respond to it directly.
Here’s what we lose when we stay silent: Culture becomes a one-way transmission. Artists create, critics interpret, institutions display, and the rest of us consume. But art has always been a conversation, a feedback loop between creator and community. When we withhold our voices from that conversation, we break the circuit.
Your opinion – expressed, shared, defended or revised – tells artists what resonates. It tells other viewers that they’re not alone in their responses. It challenges assumptions, reveals blind spots, and sometimes shifts entire perspectives. The person who first said, “I think this piece is actually about loneliness, not triumph” may have changed how thousands of others saw that work afterward.
Even wrong opinions are valuable. They start debates, spark reconsiderations, push us to articulate why we disagree. An ecosystem of differing opinions is healthier than a monoculture of approved interpretations.
If you’ve lost the habit of having opinions about art – or never developed it – start small. The next time you encounter a piece of art, ask yourself three questions before reading any explanatory text:
“What do I notice first? Not what should you notice, but what actually catches your attention. The color in the corner. The figure’s expression. The frame itself.”
“How does this make me feel? Not what emotion you think it’s supposed to evoke, but what’s actually happening in your chest, your throat, your gut.”
“What does this remind me of? Memory is meaning-making. If a sculpture reminds you of your grandmother’s hands or a childhood fear or last Tuesday, that’s your way into the work.”
From these observations, an opinion will naturally form. It might be “I love this, it makes me feel peaceful” or “I hate this, it feels pretentious” or “I’m confused by this, but I can’t stop looking at it.” All equally valid starting points.
Having opinions about art isn’t just a right – it’s a responsibility. Art doesn’t exist for itself. It exists in relationship, and that relationship requires both parties to show up fully. When artists put their work into the world, they’re taking a risk, making themselves vulnerable. The least we can do is meet them halfway with honest engagement.
This doesn’t mean every opinion is equally informed or that expertise doesn’t matter. A surgeon’s opinion on a medical procedure carries more weight than mine. But art isn’t surgery. It’s communication across the gulf between one human experience and another. And in that exchange, your experience is the only credential you need.
The critic who knows every detail of an artist’s biography and technique may miss something that’s obvious to you because of your particular history. The expert who can place a work in its historical moment may be blind to how it speaks to this moment. Your opinion isn’t competing with expertise – it’s complementing it, adding dimension to our collective understanding.
If you’ve been waiting for permission to have opinions about art, consider it granted. Not by me – I have no authority to grant it – but by the simple fact of your sentience, your capacity to perceive and feel and think.
The next time you’re in a gallery or scrolling past art online or walking past a mural, pause. Notice. Feel. Think. And then – this is the crucial part – have an opinion. Say it out loud if you’re with someone. Write it down. Post it. Or just hold it clearly in your mind: “I think this is beautiful” or “I think this fails” or “I think this is trying too hard” or “I think this changed something in me.”
You might be right. You might be wrong. You’ll certainly change your mind later about some things. But you’ll be participating in the grand human project of making meaning from the world, rather than passively consuming meanings made by others. And your participation – messy, subjective, personal as it is – is what keeps art alive.
By Rafael Lagard
© Preems