ON ART

Everyone admires Art differently. One can almost walk into any Gallery and find some of the most unreal interpretations of life from birth to death, in paint, metal, plaster and even old recycled gladbags.

To me to look at a red circle on a white background, or watch a light go on and off in an empty room every five seconds is not ‘Art’. Any dope can do that and win prizes. But Art in the form of country scenes and portraits is not Art either, it is merely a reproduction, a photograph if you like, of what can be see in the everyday world around us.

So why do thousands of people Oooooooooh! Aaaaagh! and sip Champagne whilst moving themselves around in the right circles at the latest exhibition of Peter Prozac’s ‘Things Stuck To Things’, or Margaret Mogodon’s ‘Works in Junk from Vinnies.”

Is it a way by which the rich can bullshit to each other? Does it keep people, who can’t paint or sculpt in employment just by talking about them?

“You can feel the drama, sup on the juices of angst, imagine why he hated his Mother when he did this piece. He must have agonised over this for years until he could get it down right.”

So the bald little poonce with the beret and oversized cravat was telling the transgender person in front of me at the latest showing of Alistair Duck-Fountain and his marvellous rendition of “Australian Voters”.

When I got to the painting all I saw was an immense scrotum being screwed tight in a carpenters vice. Where was the drama and the angst? Did he hate his Mother because he was born with these things? Did she screw them into the vice? It certainly would have not taken me years to scribble a pair on a piece of paper. Some people can draw them in seconds on the back of dunny doors and throw in some very creative poetry at the same time.

Is Art the skill of reproduction, the skill of making tangible that which is intangible, or is just a way to fill in time for someone? You have to be dead as well as dead lucky to make any real money from Art, so what use is it to the individual Artist?

Lets face it the Art Gallery is a gathering place for a whole lot of people who need to get a life. Then why was I there? Was it the challenge of surviving intact closely packed in with all these sexually ambiguous men and women? Was it because I was a bit depressed and needed a good laugh?

No … It was an attempt to explore another realm in the kingdom of life and to challenge my deep down antipathy for abstract Art.

Art comes from the heart. It is something in ones soul. It is not reproducing the existing but to explore ones inner self. So someone else may see something with meeting when all I see is a monstrosity. So maybe the little poonce was really saying something with a bit of truth in it. But I don’t know if I would want my privates on display for posterity clamped in a vice.

The Art of sculpting requires a lot of skill. Had Michelangelo made one slip on the Pietre he may have had to turn them into two little musketballs at the foot of the sculpture?

All of us, every man, woman and child, have the ability to be artistic in some way.

The Art of painting is open to all, whether it be on canvas or on a wall. The Art of writing is something that I desperately seek to perfect. It is probably more pleasing to be read by some than to be seen or heard.

‘Art is only Art if someone tells you it is’