Art

I found it very difficult to find an art piece I 'connect' with, simply because I can't connect with pictures. My mind works in words- I can relate to writing, but pictures are just, well, pictures. Just images, just colours (or hues, if black and white and gray) on a surface. Sculpture is sort of the same. I admire people who can create art- but I can't connect with it. Therefore, I have chosen this piece:



I have no emotional connection to this painting. It does bring a memory to mind. My art teacher once told us that a famous artist (I forget who) drew a dot on a blank sheet and it sold for millions of dollars. At the time, I didn't really think much about it- I was more concerned with chewing on my fingernails. Now, it strikes me as unfair that normal people scorn the idea of buying a dot and that normal people wouldn't be able to do that. The things fame can do for you seem unfair. Even the disadvantages of fame (paparazzi, etc.) can't counteract all the good things it can do. Rich or famous? some people ask. The obvious answer is that if you're famous, it's easy to get rich (unless you're famous for being Gandhi or you're posthumously famous). When you're rich, unless you're also famous, it's not as easy to get famous, unless you're VERY rich. Wealth has degrees.

Also, I think it's a sign of my disconnect from the artistic world, that I was scornful of and amused at the description of the picture, which reads:

Newman proclaimed Onement, I to be his artistic breakthrough, giving the work an importance belied by its modest size. This is the first time the artist used a vertical band to define the spatial structure of his work. This band, later dubbed a "zip," became Newman's signature mark. The artist applied the light cadmium red zip atop a strip of masking tape with a palette knife. This thick, irregular band on the smooth field of Indian Red simultaneously divides and unites the composition.

I noticed several things. First: how on earth is a line on a page an artistic breakthrough? Anyone, even me, with no artistic talent, could do that. Second, it says 'belied by its modest size'. Size? Not belied by its simplicity, but its size? To me, that's very strange, that small paintings could be considered less important, but lines are not. Third, I find it very silly that people honour this painting for being the first to have a vertical line in it. Also, the last sentence seems overanalytical and also very silly. A line 'simultaneously divides and unites the composition'? Of course it divides: the page in half. You'd have to be stretching to get the unites though. Or at least, that's how it seems to me.

I suppose you could continue to wax philosophical about it: say it represents a small part of a larger, hidden or secret whole, that it represents contrast and simplicity....etc. To me, though, it represents my general confusion, disinterest and (occasionally) scorn at art.

(And I wrote a lot about nothing, too, it seems)