Andy did you hear about this one?

Ok, so where to begin? I like art. All sorts of art. Whether it's painting, sculpture, film, literature, or what have you. The concept of "getting" art has always been sort of a puzzler for me. People's interpretations tend to fall into the realm of either, "I get it," or "I don't get it." This is usually most relevant with the idea of "modern" art. I think just about anyone can look at, let's say,
Michelangelo's David, and say, "Yep, that's art all right." They also will then point out how his dong is too small for a guy that size and have a hearty laugh. I'm wandering here, I'll get back to the point.

Every "gets" it. It's an artistic statement from an artistic person. It's a representation of a moment in our world in a permanent form. Truthfully depending on the angle you see David from there is more there to get, but that is not my overall point here. Where the disconnect comes in is with more modern styles of art. At a certain point art moved beyond the simple recreation of life to symbolic ideas or even capturing abstract feelings and moods. The end result is many people will look at, or hear, or touch a piece of art and their response is, "huh?" I'm not saying this is a good or a bad thing. It's just the way it is. The whole idea is about making a connection with what the artist was trying to express. Sometimes it works and sometimes the connection just doesn't happen. C'est la vie as the French are fond of saying.

I often find myself having this experience. I found myself on both sides of it recently. One of our local art repositories is the MU museum of art and archaeology. they have many permanent pieces alongside many rotating exhibits. Over the last several months they have presented various works by Andy Warhol. I have always been on the fence about Warhol. The phrase "pop art" always comes up and that's a phrase that means different things to different people. To some, "pop art" is synonymous with crap. Sorry, there is no other way to say it. Pop art is fleeting, meaningless and not worthy of any serious mention. This is not my opinion, but it's an opinion I am familiar with. I know where this sort of thing comes from. Frankly it is hard to juxtapose the Sistine Chapel with some soup cans and not pick a clear winner. Fair enough I say. But, I stand here now in a quandary. Actually quandary is not entirely accurate. Maybe crossroads is a better term. I suppose explanation is necessary.

Months ago I walked through the museum. First and foremost, I always look for anything new. Once in a while there will be a new piece from the "ancient" section. A new Mesopotamian artifact or Egyptian drinking vessel or some other such item. I will stand duly fascinated and make a mental note about it's age. After looking at it's date I will do a quick C.E to B.C.E conversion and say something like, "Wow, that thing is like, 3,000 years old!" I'm sure serious art scholars will look at me and form an instantaneous opinion about my scholarship. That opinion is most likely, "jackass." Whatever. I am impressed by antiquity, so sue me. As I made my way throughout I passed by the various themed sections which led me into the rotating gallery. For several months we have had Warhol stuff. Initially I was a bit miffed because some really good pieces in a theme about women artists had ended. I had liked several of them and was less then thrilled about their replacement. The batch in particular that threw me was the Warhol Polaroids. I'm sure you have seen some of these. Basically, Andy Warhol had taken a run of the mill Polaroid camera and snapped pictures of sometimes famous people and sometimes regular Joes. I wanted to say,

"Ok, the thought of taking photos with a such a common piece of gear really brings to mind the nature of celebrity. I mean, Debbie Harry is a celebrity and taking a typical snap shot picture of her calls into question our very concept of celebrity. The disposable nature of the medium invokes how celebrity is itself disposable and what does that say about our lives and furthermore our very concept of art?"

I didn't say this however. What I said was, "huh?" Yes indeed, I had the classic "huh" moment. Similar to many people's reaction to the soup cans, the Marilyn Monroe lithographs or any of the other themes Warhol has explored. Again, not good or bad, just a disconnect between message and audience.

So ultimately I found myself looking at a visual representation of how I have felt creatively as of late. In a technical sense I am an artist. I guess to be fair, I am a person who has an artistic desire. I write, I do comedy, I take photographs. I used to make music but in that sense the closest I get these days is doing a karaoke song now and again. It would be hard to classify that as art. Performance art maybe, but art? Not really. Like any artistic person I find myself having brief creative flurries followed by droughts. Something will hit me and just as quickly it will leave. Remember Cameron in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off? Remember the scene where they are in the museum and Cameron is staring into the painting? Later on he is asked, "what did you see today?" His response was, "Nothing good." That's it in a nutshell! Cameron's funk was my funk. I hadn't been inspired by anything in a while. That's where Andy comes in.

Today I looked around and there was a new segment of the Warhol exhibit. Again, there were some celebrities and some regular Joes. But this time they were unposed intimate shots. Not intimate in the sense some of you are thinking. There were no Rose Kennedy in the bathtub moments. Admittedly those might have grabbed my attention. These were simply quick excerpts from the real lives of people. There were no artificial poses or contrived scenes. They were just...real. Each one seemed to capture who these people really were. Without any pretense of what the person was trying to portray, instead we had who the person was. Like Cameron I found myself staring into the picture. To put it simply, the connection was made. Now the experts had nothing on me. I wasn't just appreciating the antiquity of a piece, I was feeling it. For the first time in a while I feel inspired by art.

I was trying to remember if it was Shaw or Whistler who had the great quote about portraiture. It turns out that it was Oscar Wilde. I should have known. What he said was, "The only portraits in which one believes are portraits where there is very little of the sitter and a very great deal of the artist." It took me quite a while, but today I finally saw a great deal of the artist. Inspiration is good.