Went on an art walk Friday night. Actually, I didn’t. I parked in the lot by the Phoenix Museum to catch a shuttle to a range of First Friday art displays, and ended up going to the Museum instead. This was because I had in tow meriette, muri, and Sandstone, and all of us were waiting for a vehicle by the name of Ollie the Trolley under the palo verde trees.
Now, because they were palo verdes belonging to the art museum they had Dramatic Lighting near their roots and hobnobbed with pipe organ cacti and linear mondrainish fountains. This occasioned quite a few cell phone portraits in the Skellington style until we decided that Ollie could go play with himself and all the other nice people. We were going inside with the air conditioning. It was lovely, by the way. Phoenix. Air Conditioning. Two items of dubious provenance that go great together.
We were pleasantly surprised to find an exhibit based on Cezanne visiting. The curator responsible was sharing the influence that Cezanne had on American artists as one of the fathers of the modern art movement. This required some explanation to meriette and muri, because we also experienced a great deal of post modern art that night. The dictionary definition of modern was somewhat in conflict with the stylistic movement in their heads, and there was a bit of a touch and go moment over Giant Plastic Facesucker with Mannequin vs Soft Landscapes With Figures and Nekkid Boobs. They were much consoled with the promise of spumoni after the visit.
I’m not sure why Figures with Nekkid Boobs were such a surprise. It’s not as if it were their first exposure to such things. Perhaps it was the sheer quantity; the curator was making sure that no one missed the influence on that particular topic. I had to gently call attention to the gender of the artists listed on the tags, and the relative ages. There was a wider number of painters following the Piles of Fruit, with more gonad variety. The same could be said of the viewers; the Fruit had a good many people viewing that could have been my mother. The Boobs, a sparser and more trousered audience.
So we went about and talked about influence, still life, nudity, and the prevalence of old men in painting history. I spent some time people watching. The personages on parade were twice as interesting, and I made up all sorts of stories in my head. The clumping of people by body type in correlation to artistic philosophy. The sartorial tendencies of the freebie evening target audience. And best of all, the reaction to the art.
I guess I really am more of a curator than an artist. Or rather, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m more into installation and interactive art than traditional media. I keep wanting to create pieces that border on being events. Performances, with the actors being the people who have come to view. I want people to be swallowed by art; to forget that they don’t know it, but think they might like it.
I feel that way about writing too. I want to pull people in and let them build castles in the sky. I don’t need to see their castles, and they will never know mine. And perhaps it is an awful lot of work for something that will be over in hours or a few short days, but I want it. That crack in people’s minds that leaks out dreams.
