Art is like programming. The objective is to abstract the essence of something, and re-represent that in some other medium.
There are different degrees of that - obviously modern art attempts to represent the essence much more abstractly than, say, impressionism. And some artists accomplish this better than others (in fact only a very few do it really well - the 100x engineer theory applies to artists as well). But as with programming, there is a logic to all of it.
In fact, if you look at the history of Art, the progression appears to be from less abstract to more abstract. Probably because it's harder to do well, and takes time and experience for techniques like Cubism to emerge.
But once you start looking at all art from that framework, it starts making a lot more sense.
There are different degrees of that - obviously modern art attempts to represent the essence much more abstractly than, say, impressionism. And some artists accomplish this better than others (in fact only a very few do it really well - the 100x engineer theory applies to artists as well). But as with programming, there is a logic to all of it.
In fact, if you look at the history of Art, the progression appears to be from less abstract to more abstract. Probably because it's harder to do well, and takes time and experience for techniques like Cubism to emerge.
But once you start looking at all art from that framework, it starts making a lot more sense.