To be completely honest, I never fully understood the obsession some people had with abstract expressionism. The style of art never appealed to me. In my mind, smears of paint slapped onto an easel in a seemingly willy-nilly fashion and people drawn so they did not look like people were not aesthetically pleasing or even remotely creative. They were not art (in my mind), and I did not want to look at any more examples of such things from artists who wanted to prove to me otherwise. That is why I was less than thrilled about attending the de Kooning retrospective at the MoMA over the weekend.

Having said all of that, I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised when I actually walked through the exhibition on Sunday. I was always someone who scoffed at abstract art, but I found myself moving from room to room and saying, “I like this one! I really like this one, too. OH, that one’s nice! I don’t really like that one…” and so on. In fact, the further I progressed along de Kooning creative timeline (the more abstract the work became), the more of his works seemed to appeal to me. There were a number of examples I would have gladly purchased (for a greatly reduced price) and hung up on the walls in my room as decorative art.

But what actually makes Willem de Kooning’s work “art”? Does my saying its pretty make it so? Or does someone’s willingness to spend millions and millions of dollars on it matter more? Does the MoMA hanging it up make it art, or did MoMA only hang it up because someone else deemed it such? What makes de Kooning’s artwork so appealing? Why do I, and so many other people (rich and poor), like it so much? What makes one of his paintings more appealing to me than another? Why do I like “Untitled V,” one of the last few paintings in the exhibition, more than “Gansevoort Street” (which I absolutely hated) or “February” (which was… alright, I guess)?

I can’t say what the right answer is to that first question (nor do I think anyone will ever be able to definitively end the debate about what makes something art). I’m not so sure I can explain my own preferences for certain de Kooning paintings either. In the case of “Untitled V,” maybe it was the color scheme that appealed to me so much, or maybe it was the style of brushstrokes he used (both of which made it so that my first impression upon seeing the painting was that I was looking at a very discombobulated portrait of Donald Duck). Maybe my association of the painting with a beloved cartoon character evoked a feeling of happiness in me, and this is why I liked the painting so much.

In the same way, maybe the violent color scheme (IT’S RED!) and jarring contours of “Gansevoort Street” evoke feelings of anger in me and this is what pushes me away from this specific work and toward one that is more pleasant. There is no question that “February” is aptly named—the painting is evocative of the murky, wintry month—and this association of the painting with a month that sometimes makes me sad (frigid temperatures and no one to cuddle with on Valentine’s Day) could be exactly why moments after I declared liking the painting, I quickly recanted my statement.

Maybe it is this ability of an artist to evoke such emotions within his audience that makes his work worthy of being considered art… Or maybe I’m wrong again. Either way, I’m really glad that I did go to the MoMA and that I got to experience Willem de Kooning’s work in person. The weekend excursion has really changed my perspective on abstract expressionism and has made me even keener to explore this and other non-traditional art forms, as well as to explore the elements that make these things “art.” There were quite a few interesting things I managed to spy as the elevator doors opened on each floor during the ride back down to the lobby, and so I’m sure I’ll be paying the MoMA another visit sometime soon—to take another look at de Kooning and to discover what else this museum has in store.