What would Mick and Angelo say?
Dear Dale:
I’m a painter. Take a class at the community center. I do cats in funny hats. It’s cute and the sort of thing people want to see. I know I sure do. Anyway, I went to that new show at the Wendel because my teacher recommended it. He said it was interesting. Boy, was that a mistake. I was expecting something classy, like ballerinas or water lilies. So imagine my surprise when I walked in and saw a huge pile of used tampons. You call that art? If I want to see that, all I have to do is open my garbage can. So I read the label. Something about women’s liberation. Well, I’m a woman too and all I got liberated from was ten dollars. Naturally I asked for it back but wouldn’t you know it? They said no. Told me art is about the experience and I’d already had it. What’s worse, the Wendel is supported by the city. Which means I paid for it twice over. Once with my admission and once with my taxes. Now I’m no Phyllis Stein. I’m all for the arts, so long as they’re pleasant. But I don’t like this modern stuff. They say it makes you think. No thanks. If I wanted to do that, I’d watch TV. I don’t go to museums very often but when I do, I want to see some real art. A bowl of fruit or some Frenchies sitting in a park. I can put up with a bit of the abstract stuff if it’s pretty, but I sure as heck don’t want anything that challenges my beliefs. Especially if it’s by some snooty smart aleck in a beret who hasn’t washed for a week. Who chooses these things? Don’t they have to go to school or get some sort of training? If they can’t draw a face or follow the instructions of a paint-by-numbers kit, they shouldn’t be allowed to run a museum. At the very least, they should have their eyes checked. Art has been around for hundreds of years. We owe it to the great masters of the past, people like Mick and Angelo and Leo Davinci, to fight this nonsense. You think poor Vinnie Vango cut off his ear so we could stand around looking at a big pile of used tampons? I very much doubt it.
Signed,
Art lover
Dear AL:
Tell me about it. My ex-wife used to drag me to things like that. Sometimes it wasn’t so bad. Pictures of people or places. Looked liked shit but at least you could tell what it was. Others weren’t so clear. Like someone had kicked over a can of paint and couldn’t be bothered to clean it up.
The worst was performance art. I remember one guy, old, fat and bald, his body painted all kinds of colors, who sat buck naked in a chair with a giant feather sticking out his ass. Now, you tell me: what’s that about?
It wasn’t always like that. Art used to be about real things. Animals, mostly. Ever seen those cave paintings? They’re beautiful. Call me old-fashioned but nothing says art to me like a big brute about to be clubbed to death.
Of course, most of the time, it was probably just a pre-historic fishing story. Guys talking about the big one that got away. And since they didn’t have language back then, just caveman grunts, they had to use pictures instead.
But then some fool invented agriculture and we’ve been working hard ever since. Only good thing was the fertility gods. Every group had a different name for them but basically, it was mother earth and father sperm.
Which they made into idols. Chicks with tits so big they could feed a village and dudes with cocks that put porn stars to shame. The temples were full of them. Life was hard but at least you could look at porn in church.
And then you get the Greeks. They loved the human form. Of course, being homos, all they did was dudes, every last one of them with a giant boner.
Which could be off-putting. You’d be sitting in the theater, watching a play or listening to someone recite their poetry, when, out of the corner of your eye, you’d spot some pervert rubbing his ass up against a statue of Zeus.
(No wonder the Christians censored them with a chisel. The statues, that is. The homos they turned into priests. What could go wrong?)
But then the Christians took over and, after that, it was all just crucifixions and the baby Jesus. For a thousand years. Talk about boring.
Don’t know which I hate more. Crucifixions are such a bummer. Really hard to see the upside. But Mary and her brat are just as bad. God’s baby pictures. If I don’t want to see my own, why would I want to see His?
Fortunately, the Italians, being deviants, dug up those old statues and revived the tradition of rubbing up against them.
What the French call fromage.
(Trust the French to make perversion sound sophisticated.)
They even added this new thing called perspective. What we call 3D.
Now, finally, after centuries of superstition, shit looked real again. Chicks especially. You could look at a picture and think: yeah, I’d do her.
Good for artists too since it created jobs. Painting pictures of rich pricks who wanted to show off. How big their house. How hot their wife. How expensive their clothes. Lifestyles of the rich and snobbish.
Of course, most of the time, it was just flattery. You can go to any museum anywhere in the world and look at every picture they’ve got but you’ll never see one of the pope picking his nose, scratching his balls or lifting his rump to let one rip. Realism only goes so far.
But then some Frenchman, pissed off about being overcharged for a portrait, invented the camera and the market dried up. Why pay twenty bucks and sit for an hour when you can get a quick pic for next to nothing?
So they had to do something different. Something cameras can’t do. Like catch light bouncing off a lake. Or reduce everything to a series of dots. Or totally give up on technique and just paint your feelings. Art for art’s sake.
Problem is, people weren’t interested. Which is always the way. You have something people like, some good old-fashioned fun like opera, jazz or pole dancing, and then some snob ruins it by turning it into art.
Painting was on the verge of dying out, going the way of table manners, hats without logos and wearing your wife-beater under a shirt instead of just using it to air out your armpits.
But then Van Gogh cut off his ear and people realized the real product wasn’t the painting: it was the painter.
At which point they became celebrities. Who do strange shit. Like enter a urinal in an art show or paint soup cans.
And that’s just their art. Their lives are even weirder.
Never washing or changing your clothes (Michelangelo).
Attacking other artists with a sword (Caravaggio).
Living in the attic of a funeral home (Grant Wood).
Painting in your car (Georgia O’Keefe).
And getting a chick naked, putting a pair of fried eggs on her shoulders and kicking her out into the cold (Salvador Dali).
Got to admit: I’m jealous. I’ve been offending people all my life and all I’ve gotten is fired. When someone in a beret says something offensive, it’s art. When someone in a hard hat says it, it’s bigotry. Lord only knows why.
So forget about your ten bucks. You’ll be glad you did. Because artists don’t give refunds. Just a hard time. And even if they did, it wouldn’t be worth it. Because you’d have to listen to them talk about their work. And no amount of money is worth that. Hope this helps.
Sincerely,
Dale
Hi. If you’ve made it this far, you probably liked the story. So why not check out some others at my Medium page? https://medium.com/dear-dale
