What is Art?

My answer to that question is, what I like. If it piques my curiosity or makes me ask questions about what I am looking at, all the better. This collage The White Gown by Lynn Bostick is a case in point. Lynn is a friend of mine and I love her work for many reasons. I love her use of colors and patterns, and the intricacy of her designs. Lynn loves dogs (perhaps more than people) and they often appear in her pictures as do shoes, which she also loves.There is a tension between these two people--are they having a fight or are they contemplating a more intimate moment? Is she thinking about him or somebody else? Are they going or coming?

I read an interesting column from the Los Angeles Times the other day by Crispin Sartwell. (Love that name!). In it he discusses a man who paid a top New York gallery owner $4million for an unfinished statue of Popeye (yes, the spinach eating sailor-man) by Jeff Koons. Now he is suing the gallery owner for overpricing this item. Mr Sartwell believes that one's own preferences are "...more or less as good as anyone else's. You should start with that premise, even if it's false, for if you don't trust your own taste, you will be surrounded by things you don't like." He contends that we rely on critics or reviewers or publications to tell us what we like, and because we don't want to appear unsophisticated, or we're too lazy or busy to think about it, we pretend to like it too--a formula for aesthetic disaster. (Or financial disaster if you paid $4million for it!) If we state how we really feel about something, we open a channel of communication. In other words...stop pretending to like Picasso. Food for thought.

My first thought is that this same reasoning could apply to many other aspects of our lives in this ever more complex world. Stick with what you know, or find out more about what you don't know--don't just accept the word of somebody who claims to know more than you do.

OK I'll climb off my soapbox now, and go back to the fact that I have never regretted buying Lynn's picture. I love it, and I like the fact that I know her, and the fact that her unique personality informs her work.