Is That Art & Should I Like It?

An abbreviated version of this article was published in SRQ magazine March 2012

There’s that scene from the seventies film “An Unmarried Woman” where art dealer Jill Clayburgh breaks up with her artist boyfriend.  Soon after, she’s seen struggling to carry the huge painted canvas he goodbye-gave her, down the narrow city streets of NY where she lives.

Many people thought she was crazy to dump sexy painter Alan Bates rather than move to Europe with him, as he wanted.  What struck me though, was the image of a free-thinking woman weaving through a busy crowd, a painting sail in her hands, tacking toward her hard–won independence.  Shame about Alan Bates though; too bad they didn’t have Skype back then or is that too have-your-cake-and-eat-it of me?

Sometimes looking at a contemporary work of art or exhibition feels exactly like the end of that movie.  We don’t quite understand what’s before us or where it’s all leading, but recognize that our reaction is vitally alive, distinctly our own, perhaps a bit clumsy but impossible to ignore.

Federico Diaz sculpture 

It’s exciting to run into this unguarded part of our selves from time to time; especially when contrasted with the quality of the dreary ruminations that usually preoccupy us.  

Would I rather be silently fuming because, despite what I’ve been repeatedly told, strengthening my core muscles has done absolutely nothing to help my lower back?  How many more ideas can I come up with to stretch a dollar?  Do I really want to spend too much time wondering if eating a low fat banana nut muffin is considered cheating?

But what if you don’t like how contemporary art makes you feel?  What if going to an exhibition fills you with uneasy questions:  What is this exactly?  What is the artist trying to say?  Maybe you become annoyed because you think the artist is trying to pull the wool over your eyes.

MTO's Mural Caused an Uproar

Or conversely, perhaps you might really like what you see despite being told that you shouldn’t.  Then you might begin to second-guess why something strange, ugly or incomprehensible is so appealing to you.  It doesn’t help if everyone around you hates it while you want to hang it smack dab in the front entrance of your home.

In the end, there’s only one constant to expect when you’re looking at any kind of art and that is:  You’re on your own.

Does it help at this point to bring up that most every art movement is at first met with confusion and contempt?  When the Impressionists put their hazy spin on the world or Picasso rearranged a woman’s face to resemble a checkerboard, there was not a rallying cry of Eureka heard throughout the land initially.

And consider the flipside.  Collectors who are considered savvy today often purchased the work of struggling and unknown artists.  True, some may have been guided by curators or dealers, but there are plenty of examples of collectors who just bought what they liked.

These were the people whose scowling mothers told them to stop spending money like it was growing on trees.  Yet many of these art fans wound up with impressive and valuable collections years down the line, despite their mothers’ tongue clucking (or perhaps because of it.)

Or maybe a collection doesn’t turn out to be a confirmation of the collector’s brilliant foresight and they were just stuck enjoying it over the course of their lifetime.

Where I’m going with all of this is to ask the question: why do our reactions to art have to be explained or judged?  Once we start responding to the artwork before us, we actually become part of the creative process ourselves and that is its own reward.

Let’s take two contemporary Ringling Museum exhibitions, for example.  If you’re over thirty and went to the recent Beyond Bling show, chances are you wondered why kids screamed “Snoop Dog!” when they looked at a painting.  Probably scantily clad girls from the ghetto and J Lo also have nothing to do with your life.

But how else would we get that close to seeing and feeling how this generation interprets not only their world, but a world that has become ours as well by default, whether we like it or not? 

Those artists offered us a translation of our times.  As we looked at their work we experienced their interpretations through our own point of view.  That’s when the good stuff starts to happen.  As we process our reactions, we walk away with new thoughts and feelings that can impact, annoy or please but most certainly affect us, if even in a subtle way.

And what about the Ringling’s new permanent exhibition of James Turrell’s Skyspace, "Joseph's Coat?”  Is it just a very expensive hole in the roof through which we see the passing sky?  If we let go of the self-evident and enjoy its abstraction, couldn’t it also feel like a poem in light or a transformation of ordinary space into something contemplative and at moments, sublime?  If nothing else, it’s a form of liberation from two-dimensional wall art to a kind of in-flux magic that visitors can experience differently every time the weather shifts.

I’m not suggesting that I have the answer to these questions.  I don’t know that anybody does or that it’s even important.  I just know that having an interesting experience often trumps the explanation of it.

How lucky we are in Sarasota, to have museums, galleries and pop-up exhibitions that stimulate this inner dialogue and invite us to be part of such a fascinating conversation.

Recently I found out that if you get a blueberry muffin without the nuts, you could save about 100 calories.  I’ll take the shimmering light and sky through a hole in the Ringling Museum’s roof any day.

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