YES, BUT IS IT ART?

I am sad to report that the art world -- you know, people who make and show and buy fine art, mostly painting and sculpture -- today has been infiltrated or even dominated by work that is lame, juvenile and pointless.

Much of it shows no little or no talent and no respect for traditions, materials or the audience.

The other night (Thursday, Feb. 3, 2011), I went to the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, just south of UCLA, to see a presentation by "one of the most highly regarded painters working today," Laura Owens. She showed a series of photos of her work, installed in galleries in New York, Chicago, and I think Europe.

I was appalled. I tried to like them, and I tried to think they were examples of fine art, but, alas, I could not.

Ms. Owens may be a very nice person and she may mean well, but many of her paintings looked like crude illustrations for children's books. The decorative elements were often dull squiggles and pointless shapes, bland areas of thick paint with little or no craftsmanship, and large areas of blank canvas.

One painting was designed to fit into a corner of a gallery and fool the viewer into thinking it was part of the wall, with little hints of art work at the top and bottom. Oh goody, a painting that is deliberately pointless.

The works showed only a crude sense of design, no sense of composition, and no content.

I wasn't sure I had seen enough, so later I went online and looked at dozens of other works. None of them were any better. All were disappointing.

What I want, when I go to a gallery or museum to see contemporary art, is a sense of excitement, the shock of the new, a sense of insight, of possibility, of visual renewal, the power of an intelligent sensibility brought to bear on people and places and things.

I want to be impressed. I want to think, Wow, I've never seen anything like this before. I want to see the world in a new way. I want to think, Gee, I never thought of that. I want to come out of an exhibit more aware and enlightened and sensitized than I was when I went in.

Good luck, on this night.

So, when I had enough of this slide show, I got up and went downstairs in the museum.

There was a gallery on the first floor, about 30 x 30 ft., with only two objects in it. In the center stood a large fan next to a snare drum. The fan was blowing air across the drum.

Sound boring and pointless? It was.
But wait.

From the ceiling, directly over the drum, every few seconds a drop of water would fall. But the drop of water would miss the drum. The fan would blow it away. The floor next to the drum was wet. So the drops of water were falling toward the drum but splashing onto the floor instead.

Enlightening? Exciting? A work of art? You tell me.   

Art is about vision and sensibility and intelligence. This "piece" had nothing like that. What a waste of time. What an insult to the viewer.

Significant parts of the art world seem to be in about as bad a shape as the publishing world. I don't know which is worse.

Art supposedly foreshadows the future of a civilization.
What do you think our future looks like?
Crude illustrations passed off as fine art?
Fans blowing drops of water? Drums that don't sound?

Oh, baby. I hope this doesn't mean what I think it means.

Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle.