On our way home from the 6K on Saturday, I remarked to Gavin that my arms were sore and I couldn’t figure out why. I hadn’t lifted anything heavy, done any pushups, and we haven’t been to the rock gym in months (and won’t ever anymore now that it moved way out to Katy — sadness). Yet my arms, and specifically my biceps, hurt.
Finally on Saturday afternoon I figured it out. The playground. From lunch on Friday, when we took our Quizno’s to the park. And we went to the playground. And tried the monkey bars, and had to pull ourselves up a tunnel with our arms because we were too big to crawl up it normally.
My arms were sore because we went to the playground. I laughed pretty hard when I figured it out.
On Saturday I finally checked out the much-hyped Basquiat exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts. There are billboards for it all over town, and my graphic design / web design professor had emailed us twice to encourage us to go see his work. I guess I don’t have much of an appreciation for modern art, because I left still not understanding what makes Basquiat’s scribblings worthy of a huge museum exhibit. Is it because he died young? (Drug overdose at age 27.) Is it because he happened to know the right people? (In his case, Andy Warhol.) They’re interesting, sure, but so are a lot of people’s scribblings. This painting of a trumpet player was my favorite; most of the others I was pretty indifferent to.
There were a lot of random drawings that reminded me of 10th grade, when I covered my textbooks with brown papers and used to doodle on them during class. At the end of the year I had a book cover with every spare inch filled with doodles and random thoughts. That’s what Basquiat’s drawings reminded me of.
Anyway. I obviously am art-ignorant. I generally find modern art annoying and think that the artists must take themselves way too seriously to produce some of their random stuff. There was one piece that consisted of red, white, and blue lollipops piled in a corner. Lollipops thrown in a corner? That’s art? Oh, it was interactive as well — you were invited to take a lollipop. Judging from the number of lollipops remaining, most people declined the offer.
The museum had a disappointingly small exhibit of photographs (ok, I give you, it’s a fine art museum not a photography museum). It did have some cool paintings and sculpture as well.
I think my interest in art could be described as: I like realistic things. Paintings generally impress me most when they look like photographs. Now that’s not always the case, but more often than not. Sculpture is cool. I like etchings and pencil drawings for the most part as well. Photographs are awesome.
Then again, I’m an engineer, not an artist. It’s probably not meant for me. 😉
Gavin says
What makes art art? That someone can conceive of it and others admire it? I often wonder about that when people say that engineers aren’t artists.
I think we are. 🙂
Brian says
What makes art art? That was one of the essays I had to write on the GRE. I really liked the topic. My conclusion was that anything can be art. While I may not like it or understand it, something still can be art.
Jen says
I think maybe they replaced the painting you linked to with a different one. I got a skull. Anyway, that one was hideous. I mean, it really repulsed me. Maybe it’s supposed to.
I don’t always like things that look very realistic. I think my favorite artistic period is probably impressionism. This is neat, though…
http://www.mfah.org/main.asp?target=exhibition&par1=1&par2=1&par3=311