As an art minor, I’ve spent hours upon hours holed up in Freeman Hall with headphones on and fingers dusty with colored pencil or pastel, straining my eyes and trying to perfectly recreate the hues of red, lavender and blue in a simple shadow.
Art is a natural talent that some people have and some don’t, but no matter how good an artist naturally is, there’s always something more to learn. An artist can always learn new techniques or train his eyes to see the world in a slightly different way. I’ve come a long way from my kindergarten finger paintings that were no more than a few red streaks across a sheet of paper.
So you can imagine how I’d be just a little disgruntled to walk into an art museum and see a painting on the wall with no more than that aforementioned kindergarten painting-just a few red streaks across a sheet of paper.
There are many names specific for it, elegant, intense sounding names that sound like they mean something, like abstract expressionism and minimalism. I call it cheating. I call it a big fat joke, though much stronger words coursed through my mind when perusing the Modern and Contemporary Art collection at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.
To give you a couple of mental images, one piece by Robert Morris is a black felt rectangle, nearly 11 feet long, cut into strips and hung on the wall so the strips drape onto the floor. Aptly titled “Untitled” as most modern pieces are, I can’t even find words to describe my contempt for this Robert Morris fellow. He cuts a piece of felt into strips, backs it, I’m sure, with some angsty, meaningful definition, and it gets hung in a museum?
Another piece is Carl Andre’s “Fifth Copper Corner.” It consists of 15 copper squares placed in the corner of the room. He calls it art. I call it cheap flooring. Another piece, the name of which escapes me, is a fluorescent light bulb propped in a corner.
My all-time favorite, though, is one that I’ve seen in many museums in slightly varying forms. It is simply a canvas painted one color. Ad Reinhardt’s painting, “Painting,” is a big green oil-painted square. Just a big green square. This piece hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Australia. Reinhardt calls his painting “neutral, shapeless, not large, not small, directionless, formless, timeless, spaceless and disinterested.” And for this, he is a genius. For this, his silly painting is hung in a museum.
My main issue is that these pieces of art don’t take talent to create. For all we know, Ad Reinhardt can’t draw a stick figure. My mom teaches kindergarten, and the watercolors I’ve seen the children do blow some of these so-called professionals out of the water. And people pay millions for these works? Where is the logic in that?
I could go to Home Depot and buy some insulation, mutilate it and hang it on my wall and tell people it’s a Robert Morris original. Then I’ll act completely offended and scoff at everyone who doesn’t get it. Or I could paint a canvas purple, call it “Untitled” and demand that a museum pay me to put it on exhibit. How do these contemporary artists get away with this?
And don’t even get me started on artwork that animals do. Remember that episode of “Doug” where Doug became a famous artist because his dog Porkchop chased a raccoon across a paint-splattered canvas, and he turned it in his art class? That mockery isn’t far from reality.
For instance, a piece titled “Eruption” was created by Chloe, whose red paint-coated paws left prints on a yellow background. The painting’s elegantly worded description says, “Small hairs paint fine lines throughout the painting.” Beautiful. Simply beautiful. I’ve always dreamed of owning a splotchy painting with dog hair stuck to it. Here’s my million bucks.
My point is that there is no justification for these people or dogs being recognized as famous artists when any person in the world could do the very same thing. Art worthy of adoration and praise must be complex and take honest skill to create. If contemporary artists feel that their pieces are deep and meaningful, by all means, let the world see, but don’t have the audacity to put a million-dollar price tag on it.
I realize these modern, contemporary and abstract artists claim their work means something. Sure, art means something to everyone. That’s part of the beauty of it. Art doesn’t have to be intricate or photo-realistic to mean something. Just like music, dance, literature or any type of art, the interpretation is a huge percentage of what makes it beautiful. A fan of modern art might see paying his life’s savings for an Ad Reinhardt original. To each his own.
With that said, screw you, modern art.