Modern Art



I've written about modern art on this blog before with some insight into "art imititating life." Below is a link to a UK Times piece on why it is okay not to like modern art--this reminds me of a joke that I heard on the radio the other day:



An older woman was looking at a piece of modern art in a gallery rather confused, seeing the gallery owner nearby she pointed at it and said "What is it?"



Rather condescendingly he pointed out, "It is supposed to be a mother and child."



She responded, "Then why isn't it?"



Why it's OK not to like modern art

By Julian Spalding at Times Online:



I HAVE NEVER met anyone who told me they loved modern art. No one ever came up to me, their eyes glowing with pleasure, telling me I just must see, say, the new wall drawings by Sol Lewitt in the 1970s, or the smashed-plate paintings by Julian Schnabel in the 1980s, or the life-size, glazed porcelain figures by Jeff Koons in the 1990s.



I have, however, met plenty of people who have told me that I ought to like modern art. There is some place for “ought” in life, but none at all in art; art is a gift, not a duty. The people who told me that it was my job as a curator to like modern art invariably had a vested interest in so doing: either they earned their living making, teaching, criticising or curating modern art, or they came from the worlds of the media and marketing, who genuinely admire anything that can attract so much attention.