artdiary.net

Gene Wein­garten wrote a col­umn the other day about how he man­aged to bluff his way through judg­ing an art show.  Here is my take on it.  I enjoyed laugh­ing along with Gene as he tripped his way through his art judg­ing expe­ri­ence.  Imag­ine the momen­tary red face when Cissy told him he would be jus­ti­fy­ing his choices to an audi­ence.  As one would expect hilar­ity ensued.  But when Gene detailed this rea­son­ing for 3rd place he became an unknow­ing Art Diarist:

“Okay, the stern gray col­ors made me think of total­i­tar­i­an­ism, which made me think of the Nazis, which made me think of how some peo­ple invoke the Holo­caust inap­pro­pri­ately to win argu­ments, which made me think of moral inequiv­a­len­cies, which made me think about how when you’re at one of those gas sta­tions attached to a con­ve­nience store, and there’s always some guy with a big SUV who starts to pump gas and then goes inside. So, I kept think­ing how easy it would be to drive up real close, take the hose from his car and fill the tank with it while he is still inside get­ting his Ho Hos, and then put the hose back in his car and drive away. His car is so big, and gas is so expen­sive, he prob­a­bly wouldn’t even notice the loss. And I was think­ing this is obvi­ously uneth­i­cal — BUT — would it still be uneth­i­cal if the guy was … Adolf Hitler? I didn’t want to keep think­ing about this, so I decided to give this piece third place.”

They applauded!

As a pro­fes­sional art critic, I can assure you there’s a les­son in all this. Truth is art.

Gene was able to riff this entire muse on total­i­tar­i­an­ism and the cur­rent eco­nomic cri­sis from just “the stern gray col­ors”.  Imag­ine what he could have come up with had he exam­ined and included another color or shape for that mat­ter. I   see a book in the works! But that is the whole point 0f the Art Diary.  Some­times you can come up with a new rev­e­la­tion just by look­ing at stern gray col­ors.  Another time they remain as stern gray col­ors.  For another per­son the stern gray color blends into the soft yel­low shape and it links to a mem­ory from her col­lege romance.  The impor­tant part is to spend time, at least 5 min­utes and write down what is going through your head.

I don’t have much to say about how he began his judg­ing expe­ri­ence by throw­ing away most of the work based on his low bar of whether he could do the same.  All I will say, and leave the longer dis­cus­sion for another time, is that until he saw the art he said he could do all by him­self he hadn’t thought of it.  Gene fell into the trap of plac­ing the craft of art mak­ing over the trans­for­ma­tional power of an orig­i­nal work.  Com­mon mis­take Gene and I’ll give you a pass so you could churn out another col­umn by tak­ing your poke at art.