I don't understand art

"Call Frank Azar." Or (I've got it!) the tax preparation company. "The IRS took everything because I didn't go to XYZ Tax Returns!" Maybe even better, the divorce attorney. :BroadGrin:

I came across this and just can't help myself.


"“Jubal shrugged. "Abstract design is all right-for wall paper or linoleum. But art is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudo-intellectual masturbation. . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce- render emotional-his audience, each time. These ladies who won't deign to do that- and perhaps can't- of course lost the public. If they hadn't lobbied for endless subsidies, they would have starved or been forced to go to work long ago. Because the ordinary bloke will not voluntarily pay for 'art' that leaves him unmoved- if he does pay for it, the money has to be conned out of him, by taxes or such."

"You know, Jubal, I've always wondered why i didn't give a hoot for paintings or statues- but I thought it was something missing in me, like color blindness."

"Mmm, one does have to learn to look at art, just as you must know French to read a story printed in French. But in general terms it's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code like Pepys and his diary. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn. . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything- obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence. Ben, would you call me an artists?”

“Huh? Well, I’ve never thought about it. You write a pretty good stick.”

“Thank you. ‘Artist’ is a word I avoid for the same reasons I hate to be called ‘Doctor.’ But I am an artist, albeit a minor one. Admittedly most of my stuff is fit to read only once… and not even once for a busy person who already knows the little I have to say. But I am an honest artist, because what I write is consciously intended to reach the customer… reach him and affect him, if possible with pity and terror… or, if not, at least to divert the tedium of his hours with a chuckle or an odd idea. But I am never trying to hide it from him in a private language, nor am I seeking the praise of other writers for ‘technique’ or other balderdash. I want the praise of the cash customer, given in cash because I’ve reached him- or I don’t want anything. Support for the arts- merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore! Damn it, you punched one of my buttons. Let me fill your glass and you tell me what is on your mind.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

Moonchild wrote: Perhaps if we knew his intentions behind why he designed it so, and why it was placed where it was, it would shed some light on the matter?

I'm going to have to concur with Moonchild on this. I am not moved much by art that I have no understanding of the back story of the artist or the reasons for creating a certain art piece.

And I've been to ALL of the major art museums in Europe. I've seen it all, from the frescoes to the modern, and not a single emotion was ever stirred in me.

But because of my theatre background, I fell in love with the musical "Sunday in the Park with George." A slightly fictionalize version of the French artist George Serat and his life.

And then, once in the Musee Orsay in Paris I came on 3 small painting of his. I stood there and started crying. Why? Because I could suddenly connect with what was on canvas to the man, to the man back in the 19th century.

I knew why he painted, I knew what went on with him emotionally, I knew about some of his sufferings, some of his joy.

I made it a habit after that if I was going to visit a certain city in Europe and I knew that I was going to visit a certain museum, I studied up on at least one of the artist that would be exhibited in that museum.

It made a world of difference. At least for a few moments of my visit.

I'm still not that interested in art, or the museums (although I visit them), but in my small way I found a method to become connected and appreciative of what was hanging on the wall.

Otherwise... it's all flat to me.

I'm grokking ya, Bob. Talk about a Work of Art.

Some artists' works do require biographical information to fill in the blanks of comprehension. Lautrec painted disfigurements as an echo of his own, and Van Gogh's last series of cornfields, in which the skies grow ever darker and the crows circle ever closer, seems an ominous foreboding of his impending suicide.

In the movie Clueless, one of the back-stabbing girls calls another girl "a Monet."

"Monet? What do you mean by that?"

"Well, it's ok from a distance -- but up close, it's just a big mess."