THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER                                                      

When it comes to art, I am not any kind of critic.  I have very little knowledge of what others enthuse over, but I do know that what is referred to as “modern art” leaves me cold.

Artists like Jackson Pollock are, to my way of thinking. a joke.  I honestly think that some so called artists just stretch the boundaries to see what people will actually accept as art.  How can throwing paint onto a canvas and running over it with a bicycle be called art?  Isn’t art something created with thought and feeling?  What kind of feelings do running a bicycle through wet paint possibly express?

To me, feelings are expressed through colour and texture, a swirl of blues, greens and indigo make me feel very emotional.  There is something so very sad and expressive about those sort of colours, swirled into clouds of, what I can only describe as emotion, that makes me want to cry.

The sky above us is probably one of the most copied artistic expressions we see, the clouds have so many changing shapes and colours that it is no wonder artists have tried to capture the image since time began.  However, as much as I love looking at cloud formations, I do not want this kind of emotion on my walls.

I believe that we express what is around us so, to have something emotional on view in my home would make me feel sad, and that is something I try to avoid.  My life, especially this past few months, has been an emotional roller coaster so I prefer to have something mood lifting in my daily environment.

A Van Gogh copy keeps me calm, a beautiful original of a happy horse, by a local artist, lifts my spirits and a painting of an English garden gate, an original by my late father-in-law, adorn my living quarters.  Monet copies bring a restful tranquility to my bedroom and cheer me upon waking.

On one trip to England, we spent a day in a huge London art gallery, wondering from room to room admiring the works of the Old Masters.  Some of these originals are over twenty feet wide and have to be viewed from way across the room.  Benches are provided as it takes quite a while to absorb all the details in the work.  Many of the paintings must have taken months to complete as they are so very detailed.  How can this commitment be compared to splodges of paint thrown at a canvas?  Yet it is all art of some form.

Not too far from the London gallery is the Tate Modern.  This museum is actually located in the old Battersea Power Station, a whimsical place for an art gallery, but most of the exhibits inside are whimsical too, so the location is fitting.

One room had nothing but an assortment of small, coloured balls, and looked like a child’s playroom.  Another room had a square table and two chairs suspended from the ceiling, as though the entire room had been turned one hundred and eighty degrees.

There were small rooms and large open spaces devoted to “modern art” and obviously it was a case of anything goes.  However, the piece de resistance was standing by a staircase and had quite a crowd round it.  Many people held cameras, catching the image to take home with them, to share with friends.

The exhibit was two old fashioned cabinet televisions, one inverted on top of the other to show an upside down view of the same scene.  Depicted was a video of the back of a naked man.  He was crouched down, legs bent to show the best view of the bulls eye between his butt cheeks.  By gyrating his hips slowly, he made his rude bits swing back and forth in the breeze!

How this had ever, in the biggest stretch of the imagination, been called art?  But there it was, in perpetual motion!  I really am not sure if anyone would ever want to hang this on their wall, but the crowd around it were enthralled and, as I stood watching the spectacle, so was I.  I guess there must be some sort of attraction to the weird things in life as I definitely found the exhibit more interesting than anything by Jackson Pollock.