Crap is in the Eye of the Beholder

I recently read where it took Leonardo daVinci twelve years to paint the lips of the Mona Lisa. Must be because she never stopped talking. It's a good thing he wasn't painting Mick Jagger's lips, he'd still be at it. Come to think of it though, with Jagger he could have used a roller.

Leonardo should have lived long enough to see the advent of modern art. Modern art is technically crap that people pay to look at. I was recently looking at one of these modern marvels at art museum on Niagara University. It looked like someone had vomited after eating a whole box of crayons. Or a little like Mick Jaggar. I doubt that the artist took twelve years to master this particular piece; I couldn't imagine the whole thing taking much more than twelve minutes.

They don't really “paint” the “picture”, they just fling paint on a canvas. I've seen that same technique at the zoo with a monkey flinging his do do on the glass of his cage. I even think the monkeys give it a name; they call it “What are you looking at?” Instead of washing it off the glass maybe the zoo should display it as art.

My son Paul had the temerity to mention to a particular “art lover” that one particular piece consisted of nothing more than cereal boxes dangling from strings. He must have felt like one of the characters from the Emperor's New Clothes; this art patron proceeded to tell him why it was art. His quote; “If it provokes a reaction in you then it's doing its job; it's art.” My son should have provoked a reaction by punching the guy and calling it performance art.

Performance art is a category all its own; it's where some guy who shouldn't even be allowed out on weekends performs some inane action in front of a lot of unsuspecting patrons. Apparently the dumber the better. The epitome of this new form of art/entertainment is the phenomenon known as Lady GaGa. Or Lady Gag Me With A Spoon as I like to think of her.

I could go on ranting, but the truth is that modern art is not really about art; it's about marketing. It's telling somebody that Salvador Dali was a painter, even though he couldn't seem to color within the lines. It's convincing us that Picasso is an artist too, even if his painting looks like a paint-by-numbers picture using Morse code. And Lady GaGa is an artist, not a whack job dreamed up by Stephen King under heavy medication. Good one.

So while artists like to fancy themselves as anti-establishment, the fact that they get “educated” types to hang these rejects from a kindergarten finger-painting class in art galleries proves that they are merely snake-oil salesmen in disguise. So now, as a former salesman, when I look at this nonsense hanging seriously up for public view, I think, “Wow, you guys are GOOD!”