Thursday, July 28, 2011

Van Gogh When No One's Looking

The day will come, my friend, when art will no longer be kept in square cages. It will weave seamlessly through various points of interest in the home. It will pop up with the toast, and sit at our feet with the dog. Frames will seem a severe convention of the past. A contrivance to show the straight edges of walls. How we like to get things level!  Walk down a suburban street and when you hear the pinging of a hammer in the front room, stop. Someone's hanging a new print to match their couch. "Is it level? Is it level?", they ask. Perhaps they should be asking, "Why am I living in a rectangle box, surrounded by squares? Why not circles and triangles? Spirals and ellipses? They could ponder the white space inside the frame. Does it give the art room to breathe? Or hold it in place? Art is a wild animal, you know, that will one day devour you whole. Don't kid yourself, that you've tamed it. Somewhere sits a woman, reading her copy of House Beautiful, and while her back is turned, the painting over the mantel, creeps that much closer to bursting out of its frame.    

4 comments:

  1. I thought I was the only one that was aware of this. I still have framed art on my wall (level, of course) but I've hedged by having only paintings of kitties and little baby ducks. When the day comes...and it will...that they burst from their frames, it should be little more than awesomely cute.
    H. B.

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  2. H.B. - Now, that I would like to see. You sitting in your living room with kitties and baby ducks on the wall.

    I think you may have over-hedged, though. The question is, would the kitties and ducks qualify as "art"? We could debate this round and round, but I'd say it's highly doubtful. So I think they're just stuck on the wall, and you're just going to be a man who lives with ducks and kitties on his wall. But whatever turns your crank.

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  3. Well...I was always under the impression that one man's art was another man's fart, but "Playing with the Kitten" by Munier or "Kittens in Garden" by Maday or any of a number of works by Kaj Senvall would pass as acceptable art, as opposed to gas.
    I guess I would rather deal with a frameless semi-artful kitty rather than a "Garden of Earthly Delights".
    H. B.

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  4. H.B. --a "Garden of Earthly Delights" (!) ---I've never heard it called that before.

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