Who Is Art, Anyway?

“Art for Art’s sake” doesn’t work as a joke anymore because nobody knows anyone named Arthur. It’s like “Fire at Will!” Or “April Fool!” Except that Wil Wheaton has 2,269,636 followers on Twitter and I went to school with a smart girl named April.

Never mind, I’ll start over.

We went to the Museum of Modern Art in La Jolla. I didn’t mention that before because it deserves its own bit.

Normally, I don’t do Modern Art. (I think of it that way, with capital letters.) Modern Art to me is like Brussels sprouts or broccoli are to you. It’s good for me, but I don’t like it.

I love Brussels sprouts and broccoli. I don’t love Modern Art. I don’t even get it most of the time. Here, take my membership in the liberal intellectuals’ club. I haven’t gone to a meeting in years anyhow.

But Robert understands and enjoys Modern Art, and it’s a nice museum, so we went. Surprise, surprise, I’m glad we did. It was fun. Really. It was even Fun!

The exhibit was all about Realism. (I liked it, so it gets a capital letter too.) The piece of corrugated cardboard leaning against a wall turned out to be cast out of bronze. It seriously looked just like cardboard.

There was a trashbag heaped in the middle of the floor, except that wasn’t a trashbag, it was carved out of solid marble. The old paint cans, brushes and rags were made of Styrofoam. The crumpled blue quilted sleeping bag was also bronze.

Capital letter plus exclamation point Fun! And amazing craftsmanship.

But was it Art?

I’m used to art being pretty, and Art being expressive. This was expressive as hell, I’m just not sure what it was saying.

There were video rooms. One had New York street scenes on all four walls. Robert said, “This is the kind of art I hate.” It was pretty enough so I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t stay to watch. Later he told me after I left, the street scenes expanded to show that they were all fake. (Realism!) They were just stage sets, all mock-ups, mostly miniature. He said, “I like it now.”

I wrote that down because I’m convinced there’s a definition of Art buried in there somewhere. In any case, it’s a better definition than mine, which is:

If it’s in a museum, then it’s Art.