April 24, 2015
(This is part
of a 365 project during my 70th year where I write and illustrate a blog on
each day's gift.)
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| Out of Order art auction by Maryland Art Place |
The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls. ~ Pablo Picasso
I marvel at how art intrudes on the way I see
things. After seeing Edward Weston’s famous black and white photo of a green
pepper years ago, I can never again look at a green pepper in the way same way. Perhaps
the way the pepper photo shaped my mind helped me to see the special qualities
in a piece of metal, which I photographed and exhibited in the Maryland Art Place’s Out
of Order silent auction that took place tonight. My art sold, I was glad to
help contribute to MAP and I had a good time at the party too.
Tonight, my eyes kept straying to a large framed
photograph, the torsos of two men facing one another with a penis showing through
the legs of one. Just two art frames down the wall from this was a painting of
cupcakes with glitter glue. When I met the cupcake artist, I couldn’t help
thinking that the cupcakes should have been moved a little further away from
the penis. The glitter cupcakes were the creation of a 4th grade
girl, so excited about being a part of a big art show. Her mile-wide smile and
enthusiasm were contagious but her mother reined in the enthusiasm. “I told her
that she’s not a real artist until someone buys her art.”
I don’t know if anyone bid on her painting by the
time the bids had closed, but I’m not sure I agree with her mother. Artists are
driven to create art because something has touched them and they want to
express that feeling. It is the process that they go through, the process of creating,
that makes them artists. If others like it or are inspired to look at life in a
different way, that is good. However, if no one buys it, does that mean the person who
created the art is not an artist? Do we value art only by the money it brings? Andy
Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans sold for $15 million but I am more likely to
buy the cupcakes than the soup cans.
The three pieces I’ve mentioned —the penis, the
cupcakes and the soup cans—make me think and question. What was there about the
juxtaposition of penis and body that made it so visceral? What was it about the
cupcakes that made me want to smile? Why should a series of realistically
painted soup cans be considered art? Whatever the answers, it is the questions
that stretch perception. And that’s what I love about art—both the things I like and
don’t like.
A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
My
gift today is a mind stretch.
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