Are you an art snob? A philistine? Do you only go to tiny little galleries that only cool people have heard of, or do you enjoy the occasional outing to the big touristy museums? Do you Just Not Get It? Are you pretty good at faking it?

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

Answers

I'm not a snob, at least I don't think I am. I do love art museums, though. And I like the big touristy museums best (proof I'm not a snob).

I don't always get it. There's an installation in the Denver Art Musuem right now where you walk into a completely dark room full of confused, giggly people. The idea is that, as you stand there in total darkness, your perception starts to change. As your eyes adjust to the dark, you became aware of a big purple square of light on the wall in front of you. You walk towards it and disover it's an indentation on the wall with all different colors of lights and various other things.

Dang, now that I'm writing about it, it sounds cool. I was unimpressed, though. The purple square just didn't do it for me.

I like those big, heavy, colorful oil paintings. The kind where the color is layered on so thick it's tangible. Mostly, I sit in front of them and daydream about touching them. I also like the art of everyday objects. I'm entranced by Native American costumes and masks, ancient tile and vases. Even things like combs and jewelry

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

I'm so pleased to hear your confessions about museums! I like "stuff" you can look at, and I end up feeling like if I was that interested I could see the pictures in a book. So I'd rather look at the buildings, or people, or go to a bookstore. I'm also unmoved by sculpture. I don't mind looking at it....on the way to somewhere else. But I just can't start at this stuff looking for deeper meaning.

And don't even waste my time with the large blue-painted canvas and pretend that's "art". Anything I can do is NOT art.

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

I'm a Just Never Got It. God knows, I spent enough time in my college years trying to get culture, walking through the museums of Boston and Cambridge, bored out of my mind. There are a few works that have captured my attention, but mostly I just shrug. I had the same problem with classical music. I like Bach organ music (doesn't everyone?) and some Mozart, but otherwise, it's all just background music to me. Similarly, for me an art museum is mostly a classy venue to have a quiet stroll with a date. Apologies to all the curators out there.

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

I'd really like to voice an opposite opinion, but sadly I too find little entertainment in capital "A" Art. The closest thing I've found to art in my life recently was Toy Story 2. As a programmer I know all too well the challenges in producing such a piece. The most frustrating thing about computer-based animation is that if it's good nobody notices the little things... you only notice them if they're wrong.

Either way, I like museums which employ historic elements to help me relate to the art, but otherwise I'd rather be reading.

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

My first experience with Capital A Art was my home town (smallish) art gallery, who hosted an exibition of things such as "Three Tarred Boxes", which was 3 grocery boxes, covered in tar, and "chicken bones in a soup can", which was...well, you get the idea.

My poor mum was so embarrassed...she wanted us to 'get it', but the art was really bad.

Now, I like galleries. I go to the big one here in Chicago about once a month, and sometimes I help the school tours cheat in the Roman and Greek collections. I could sit in front of the Chagall Window for hours.

I wish I "got it" a little more, but sometimes it all seems like a big sham. I still don't get how a red stripe on a blue background can sell for a million dollars.

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

I love art, but I agree with you, Kristin. Abstract art or a big blue background with a black strip isn't art to me. If *I* can do it, then it isn't art.

I love art, and actually collect some things by certain artists. I like paintings, sculpture, carvings, whatever. I admire the creativity and talent that went into creating whatever. But I like the object to at least have some resemblance to whatever it is supposed to be. For example, what the heck is that statue supposed to be in downtown Houston? It doesn't look like anything. It's ugly BUT, the Mustangs of Las Colinas--wow...that's art.

My new boyfriend gave me The History of Western Art for Christmas. I love that book. Especially the Roman Art. Michelangelo. That's art, people. How can you not "get" that?

I don't understand the "getting it" thing? You either like it or you don't. I don't think there has to be a deeper meaning or unearth the secrets of the universe. If it brings you pleasure to admire it, and you have an appreciation for the act of it's creation, that's all that counts. Of course, I guess that could be said for the PEZ dispenser here on my desk. Is that art?

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

The Crocker sucks...I loathe it and my experience has been much like yours-- I've been bored stiff and utterly unimpressed. I did see an folk art exhibit there about 10 year ago by Rev. Howard Finster, the guy who did the "Little Creatures" album cover for the Talking heads and his stuff was really fun and cool. He did things like paint little odd pictures in muffin tins and just took common place things and made them interesting. You have to see his stuff to know what I mean. It's just cool.

The De Young, has had some awesome exhibits. I liked the impressionist exhibit, the Buddhist exhibit and the Alfred Bierstadt exhibit. The Legion of Honor has some interesting stuff, too.

The SF Museum of Modern Art...um, most of it, I totally don't get, though I laughed my ass off at the white porcelain representation of Michael Jackson. And I enjoyed the Chicano exhibit there, as well as the Frida Kahlo and Diego Riviera stuff.

With art, like anything else, I think a lot of it is crap. You just have to hunt for the occasional diamond amongst the dog piles.

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

I like art, are makes me happy. Museums make me happy. Well, the Detroit Institute of Arts, The Children's Art Museum and the Historical museum are clustered together, so I love the whole area. The museums are beautiful themselves. It's all good, it's all fun!

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

I've always visited museums since I first went to college in Providence, Rhode Island. I think publicly accessible collections of art and history are very important and when travelling I try to visit the local museums.

When I lived in Manhattan I tried to visit all the museums but also kept going back to places like the MOMA, though I never thought I liked "modern" art their collection is absolutely fantastic. When I lived in Los Angeles my favorite musuem was the Getty Museum in Malibu. Now that they've built their new place in Bel Air I don't know what the old museum still has, but it was always a great place to visit with an amazing villa with herb gardens, beautiful old pottery, illuminated manuscripts and paintings.

I now live in San Francisco and enjoy the Oakland Museum of California; it has a nice permanent collection, a good outdoor site for small events like bands, and really interesting temporary exhibits. I also like the Legion of Honor, the sculpture is excellent and the spaces and lighting is first-rate. The pedestals look like like junk, though - they should treat the art better. We saw the Assisi temporary exhibit - reliquaries? weird, weird, weird ...

The other two 'big' museums in the City, the DeYoung and the SFMOMA, are worthless. They have examples of art by well-known artists, but not in styles for which they were famous. For instance, there's a sort-of representative sketch of a tree by Mondrian, who's famous for the blocks of white, red, blue and yellow with black lines. What's the point of spending so much money on second rate art? ...And the last time I was at the SFMOMA, one whole wing was allocated to an 'industrial design' exhibit of outdoor equipment like tents and boots and thinbgs, all by North Face, with North Face's corporate logo everywhere. Yeah, like I want to pay to see advertising.

The Buena Vista Gallery (?) across the street from SFMOMA is a pretty generic site for temporary exhibits, but has an interesting range of showings.

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

P.S. Yes, Joy, there IS a Pez Museum ... :)

http://www.best.com/~pez94010/pez/index.shtml

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

A whole exhibit plastered with North Face might be a bit overbearing, but industrial design museums are among my favorites. We went to the Design Museum in London and I thought it was really cool to see things like consumer packaging, computers, and telephones in a museum setting. I'll never look at a bottle of Herbal Essences again without thinking about the changes in packaging design that made it possible for me to have those little yellow flowers visible through the shampoo.

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

Hmm, tricky question this. I'll start by saying that I came bottom of my art class once at high school, twentieth out of twenty. Therefore I can't be THAT much of an art snob.

Pretty much everything that I've learned about art since then has been off my own bat, and that's not really much I have a few favourite artists (Goya, D|rer, Magritte, John Martin, Klimt etc) and a few collective movements and styles (Expressionism, Bauhaus etc) which I find interesting, but I don't know much about art history in general.

Usually I need to have it explained to me if I'm to get it on any level at all; sometimes I even appreciate abstract art better, and I don't go for abstract stuff generally. But if you Just Don't Get It, there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. Better to admit it and be honest than pretend you DO get it and possibly wind up looking foolish. Like everything else, it's down to the individual.

One thing that does intrigue me very much about art galleries, though, is the number of schoolkids you see at them. Seems that every time I go near any of the bigger galleries here there's a horde of schoolkids there on excursions from school. Is this just a local phenomenon or have other people seen this happen?

http://www.geocities.com/jgwr/

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

I love art museums. They are a very meditative experience for me. I don't like everything in them. I appreciate different forms & artists at different times in mt life. Right now I very much like Santos type art, among other things. I think I will always identify with Munsch's "the Scream" & with Georgia O'Keeffe. I learned most of what I know by helping my child with art reports & by visiting Santa Fe, NM & the Nelson in KCMO.

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

The idea, "If I can do it, it isn't art," doesn't really apply here, in my opinion. You cannot do it. You cannot do it because it has already been done. Once it's been created, you can't create it again. You can reproduce it, of course. If what you're saying is that if you can reproduce it, it isn't art, then that opens up a whole new series of questions. Personally, I don't think the statement, "I could do that" can ever be justiied unless you -did- do that.

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

I love art musems. Growing up in Boston was good because we had the MFA, which has a huge and well-organized collection, old through new, including some completely questionably obtained ancient stuff from egypt and medieval japan (esp. the kimonos, armor, masks and swords).

I like to look at stuff. sometimes the context helps, although i waver as to whether it should be necessary. I like some modern stuff too, even if it's stuff that I technically "could do". i kinda agree that the point isnt could you but did you. I mean, I like a lot of punk bands even though I could play just as well as them. The point isn't how hard it is to do do, for me, it's how it makes me feel when I look at it.. The huge black brushstrokes on a white square amuse me, make ne think of giant calligraphers and the depth of black paint, and the pollock splotchies make me think of him covering rooms in canvas and spinning around like mad with his hands full of brushes.. I like the motion implied, the kinetic enthusiasm. what can i say? I dig it.

-- Anonymous, January 13, 2000

I like going to art museums, but I don't usually spend _hours_ in them. The pace of walking through a museum tires me out and by the end of a few hours, my feet hurt, my back aches and all I want to do is sit down and have a nice hot cup of tea.

I prefer to go and get my art dose in short sips. Maybe even find one room that I really like and sit on the bench to have a good look, but I don't like to spend too much time trying to walk through a whole museum.

Also, I don't like most modern/post-modern art. Abstract just isn't my thing. Especially random polka dots in black and white.

I like the "old-fashioned" stuff, with a particular penchant for Brueghel, Reubens, Monet and Picasso before his cubist period.

I also love medieval and Renaissance art and I can spend hours staring at illuminated texts and "dark" religious tableaux.

But preferably when sitting down -- to spare my tootsies.

-- Anonymous, January 13, 2000

Art museums would be more fun if the staff had a better collective sense of humor. Or maybe they do, and I don't like that the joke is on me.

It just cuts into my enjoyment when they give me a pamphlet of sorts about Korean furniture, then make the room with the furniture too dark to read it, except by the light illuminating the damn furniture, which requires leaning within 10 feet of the damn furniture, which triggers some kind of silent alarm, which brings the dipshit in the ugly polyester blazer trotting up with a tsk-tsk look on his face telling me how I'm getting too close to the art. Either the staff members are all idiots to give you something to read that you can read only by violating their rules, or they're sadistic bastards who enjoy baiting people into a trap then hopping on their exposed necks.

That said, I find Chicago a great art experience. I love the Picasso statue at the Daly Center, but the Miro across the street looks like a concrete truck took a crap. I'm mystified by the Chagall window at the Art Institute that someone praised earlier. It's blue. Wow. Next.

The impressionist works are all wonderful, though, and worth the trip in themselves. Plus I love the Rodin bronze of Balzac in the foyer outside the impressionist area.

Overall, I like art displays, but I reserve the right to pick & choose.

-- Anonymous, January 13, 2000

I love all the art museums in San Francisco and Santa Fe and Amsterdam (and Holland in general). Those are the ones I have the most experience with. Can't speak for Sacramento's offerings.

I don't have to like or "relate to" every piece of art I see in museums and galleries to like looking at art in general. Some modern art bores me, for example, but some is great, and some is very funny as well.

Religious art is sometimes amazingly beautiful, from my devout agmostic POV - and I don't just mean Christian art, but Buddhist art, Muslim art, Sikh art, etc.

Anyway, yes, I love hanging out in shrines to creativity and vision. :)

-- Anonymous, January 13, 2000

Oops, sorry for the typo... I'm an *agnostic*, not an "agmostic." Gotta have some tea before I type!

And I was just thinking about the "touristy" thing... I guess a lot of tourists do go to the big museums here, and well they should. But then there's the rest of us who just have membership cards and can pop in whenever we feel like it, whether there's anything "special" on display or not, or we can see the same exhibit several times if we really love it.

I do that quite often - like I went to see the aboriginal art show at the Legion of Honor about five times recently. Plus the Legion itself is such a great building in such a gorgeous location, and is walkign distance from my flat, so I love that aspect.

-- Anonymous, January 13, 2000

Hey! Jenn, I really like the big dark room at the Denver Art Museum! If my first experience in it had had a bunch of giggling tweens, as yours was, I might not have.

I have pedestrian tastes, but what I like does give me a lot of pleasure, so thblpt to anyone who sniffs that "that's not good art" or "Impressionism sure does make pretty pictures." I like Impressionism,* Georgia O'Keeffe (and I think anyone who can see only genitals in her work is pig-headed, or pig-eyed), and overall mostly 20th century stuff.

My fondness for Impressionism originates from its being the first sort of painting I ever saw, and I saw lots of it hanging in my hometown's schools and library because all the paintings were my hometown. Old Lyme spawned an artists' colony in the last last century and was good for Impressionism because it had interesting and copious light reflected off the Sound, rivers, and lakes.

I, like Jenn, like paintings when the oil has been slathered on three-dimensionally. That's because I like 3D artforms best--can I include dance, since that involves 3D human bodies? Architecture, sculpture, dance, mobiles (the Alexander Calder exhibit in the SF MOMA of 3D wire sculptures lit to cast 2D image-shadows on the walls), furniture, pottery.

I can sometimes understand (if it's explained in words of one syllable) what a contemporary artist is expressing in those "But is it art?" pieces called "installations" (like the big dark room, "Trace Elements"), but I can't think of anything from such exhibitions I'd have on my wall. On my walls, I want pretty.

There was recently an article in the Wall Street Journal about real Artistes sneering at the folks with so much disposable incomes that they want paintings that will match their couches instead of ones that will rock their minds. Count me in, then, with the tasteless.

And Jenn, don't you think the Denver Art Museum looks like a castle with aluminum siding?

-- Anonymous, January 13, 2000

Okay, Big A Art you can walk around and look at and talk and hold hands and flirt. But what are your supposed to look at while the symphony is playing? I like classical music when I'm working, or reading, or driving....but going to a symphony with nothing to look at? I fall asleep!!

-- Anonymous, January 13, 2000

I would have to actually go into an Art Museum to make that call. I'm a hick.

-- Anonymous, January 13, 2000

I love art and love museums with all my heart. My idea of a grand old time is wandering through a museum all day. I think it's all a mindset--if you think "O God, I have to look at the art and make sense of it and find the Meaning in each piece" of course you're not gonna like it, it's like homework. But I think "Hooray! I get to look at the art!" and it's a treat! I don't care about meaning, I don't try to define things, I just look. If it's something that I can do, it doesn't make it any less art, if it is something that makes no sense, it doesn't make it any less art. Art is fun and funny and joyful. When I see Starry Night or The Persistence of Memory The False Mirror, I practically bust in two from grinning-- it's like seeing old friends. I'm always laughing in museum, because I'm so happy. And sometimes the art is SUPOSED to be funny! Like Dada, like some of the moderns! But everyone else is wandering about all serious and gloomy, I don't get it. When I walk through a museum, I feel like Huckleberry Finn.

Also, I tend to get supercharged artistically myself. Many of my best photographs were taken in museums, as they usually have incredible lines.

Forgive the stream-of-consciousness post, but on this subject I can't help myself.

-- Anonymous, January 13, 2000

I love museums of every type and kind, art museums included. My parents took me to them since I was small, and always seemed to be enjoying themselves (rather than this being something they were doing to teach me culture or whatever) so I've always felt comfortable there. I like crafts and objects the most, but there are lots of paintings I like too. Generally I don't get modern art, but I feel okay about that. I can enjoy it just on the level of thinking it's pretty, even if I don't know what it's supposed to mean. I don't got to galleries as much, just because I don't know their hours and stuff the way I know when museums are open.

My partner feels intimidated by museums and galleries, but I've been trying to encourage him that it's not a test, just something to do for fun. He's getting better with it.

The one art form I don't get and don't enjoy is modern art photography. I can't appreciate it on any level and always end up feeling like "so what?"

The one

-- Anonymous, January 13, 2000

My favorite art museum: The Allen Memorial Art Museum on the campus of Oberlin College (http://www.oberlin.edu/allenart/).

I loved hanging out there. It was a guilty pleasure for me, really, to spend a few hours there instead of doing whatever it was I should have been doing.

I've been to a few art museums here in Philadelphia and in NYC, but I never felt the same about them as I did about Allen. That museum was *mine* somehow.

-- Anonymous, January 14, 2000

I like art, but museums often bore me. I tend to have a short attention span when walking around looking at things (whether in a museum or a store). The Crocker is particularly bad (I do remember a neat exhibit of etchings or illustrations or something there... it made a big impression, you see).

Abstract art... Some of it is really great. Other stuff isn't. Some has meaning, some doesn't. And some of it will be remembered in a hundred years, and some won't. Just like all the representational art that has ever been made. Whether it looks difficult or not doesn't relate to it's merit as art, at least for me. (I do find the attitudes toward modern art amusing, since the attitude seems to have been the same for every movement when it was new).

I hardly ever go to museums, though. I think the last one I went to was the Edward Gorey exhibit at the Cartoon Art Museum.

-- Anonymous, January 15, 2000