Pictures Not on My Wall

Last week, I went to see the Basquiat exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art here in L.A. Little Miss is coming to see it with me this evening. Man, I can hardly wait to find out what she makes of all this stuff.

I'm neither an art professional, in any sense of the word, nor am I one of those "I don't know much about art but I know what I like" types. So I feel qualified to say this: By most objective measures, some of this stuff is just plain ugly. Even the most technically able objects in the exhibit are unbeautiful at best.

Most of the conversations about the man's work consist of incidents from his life, his uneasy relationship with the people who commissioned and bought his paintings, and the fact that he died so young. There's not too much discussion or agreement about what makes his stuff good or bad. What's more, if this exhibit is anything to judge by, a lot of his things look very much alike.

A long time ago I went to an Impressionist exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Most of the paintings were by people who Art History has decided were true artists, despite the opinions of their contemporaries, who thought they were a bunch of poseurs. You find stuff like theirs in dentist's offices and hotel lobbies now. I enjoyed the paintings, walking at a pretty good pace through the halls, and then I saw a Cezanne that looked something like this.


It wasn't too different from the other Cezannes on the walls. It wasn't even very big. I stood there staring at the thing, trying to figure out why it drew me so much more strongly than anything else I had seen that day. I'm still not sure.

Some of the paintings at the Basquiat exhibit affected me that way too. By that measure, at least, he was an artist.

(Hey, Ma, lookit me - I finally learned how to post pictures!)

Benshlomo says, Shut your mouth and open your eyes.