Art

I am not a huge fan of art.  I find it boring and uninspired, or if not, lame it seems to be hack and unmotivated.  I'm always disappointed when I'm shown a famous piece that has been critically acclaimed and is worth tens of thousands of dollars and there is just a red square slightly off center.  Let me take a moment to clarify, I love almost every artist I know and I love their works, street artists do a fantastic job as well, cartoonists, surrealists, and graphic designers all turn out paintings, drawings, sketches, and strips I can appreciate.  I have a problem with 'art' as defined by the art community with power, that is curators, critics, and collectors.  The three C's love money but hate art and will do anything they can to destroy said industry.  They collect, swap, and bargain classic pieces to give them great value but never let a new name break onto the scene unless they create terrible blotches of paint on canvas.  Dali, Picasso, Monet, Da Vinchi, Van Gogh, O'Keeffe, Warhol, what are the two things they share?  First, they are the only artists a common man would know Second, they are dead.  If you want something to be valuable in the art world it better have one of their names on it (or some other popular dead person), otherwise no one will buy it.  Why not?  Because if art was valued based on style, originality, detail, and overall beauty then collectors and museums would suddenly lose a whole lot of money.  Also they are trying to destroy art because their hearts are suspected to be two sizes too small.  Note: I made all of that up, but it sounds pretty freakin logical am I right?  Anyways, I think if the starving artist types decided to take authority and take control of the community because those are the people who really love art.  They could find works that have vision and a creative artist behind them, re-work cliched museums, breath new life into worldwide interest in art, and maybe even make a little money.  Now I know some artists will be opposed to the making money part of my proposal, it might interrupt their whole starving lifestyle, but think of it like this: you could just give all the money away and leave yourself barely enough to scrape together for a bowl of Kraft Mac'n'cheese and a pack of cigarettes per week, just like you're accustomed to.  So I don't hate artists or most of what they create, I just hate what collectors have done to warp the idea of 'art' around some contrived concept that keeps them rich and feeling like they're better than everyone else.  So I say starving artists punch art collectors in their tiny hearts, with any luck they'll have a heart attack and die, we don't have time to help the Grinch in this story.

There seem to be only a few types of famous 'masterpieces' left in the world.  There are a few that I really appreciate, Dali and MC Escher being all of them.  I once thought that I enjoyed other artists but then I went to these horrible locations, formed of broken dreams and artistic constipation, called museums.  Besides the Surrealism that I actually enjoy there seem to be three main types of art, Classical, Modern, and Drug Induced.  I hate them all, and will explain why.  Classical art is all painted in the same style and the subject was either the bible or whatever royal family could get their kids to sit still long enough to have a portrait done.  Sometimes really crazy artists painted kings and queens with angels and Jesuses, combining the two themes to create something twice as boring.  I discovered this after visiting the Prado, one of Spain's most famous museums, all the pieces looks like the same guy painted them all in the exact same way.  That is when I stopped liking most artists, when I found out they were all copy cats.  It would be like if I was a writer and copied Stephen King's writing style down to a pin but then added in some M. Night Shamalan twist endings in.  There are those who would call me a good-for-nothing fraud, and then once my mother got done making fun of me the critics would be worse.  That's all I find in Classic art the same thing over and over, with a slight twist. 
Modern art is bullshit.
Drug Induced art has a potential to be decent, there might be some ideas partially visible, and maybe an overlaying theme or social commentary, but the person clearly took one too many pills before starting.  It does show more initiative than Modern art, which, as previously mentioned, is bullshit, but there is still a great lacking in true artistic presence.  A good example of Drug Induced art is Pablo 'drop the acid' Picasso.  As the nickname I hope catches on suggests, he liked him some hallucinations brought on by massive amounts of foreign chemicals in the blood stream.  He painted some good art at one point, people bought some of his paintings, he earned enough money to buy some really powerful drugs, painted some terrible and crappy art, people bought his paintings because he was already famous, and he got enough money to buy more drugs.  There is a lesson in his story people of the world.  If a friends shows you a piece of art clearly influenced by drugs that may have life threatening consequences, do NOT buy it to make them feel better.  They will think the art is good and think their inspiration came from the crazy acid trip.  If anything find out where they got the drugs and then buy some yourself, the drugs made that piece of crap your friend painted look like a masterpiece, it must be some good shit.

P.S  Starving artists, if you take my advice and renew real, beautiful, new, and creative art please don't use the money like Picasso did.  Don't do hard drugs if your in a position of power, you'll just end up ruining art for everyone all over again.  There is plenty of time for hard drugs when your retired, besides the nursing home could use some people who live it up.