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Felt tip pen on paper

So my sister the artist dragged me to the Museum of Modern Art on Friday (the MOMA, for short). Now, I'm not much of an art connisseur, but I do dig the classics -- Monet, Manet, Picasso, the French guy that did all the pics of the girls dancing, etc...

Modern art, well, not so much. I can appreciate Warhol and Basquiat, and I have to admit that the Jackson Pollack's we looked at Friday were way more interesting than those splatter paint T-shirts I made at cheerleading camp back in high school. But when I got to a room where the "artist" had just cut out large pieces of construction paper and then drawn a line down the middle of it and framed it, well, it just didn't scream art to me.

Now some of the modern stuff was pretty cool. From afar, I couldn't figure out what this one mural-ish thing of a horse was made of. Turns out, it was cigarettes that the artist had twisted and squished into the shape of the animal. Pretty cool. And then there was this other exhibit where the artist had dipped probably 1,000 paint brushes in red paint and then squished it into some kind of jelly and then mounted it. (Believe me, it was LOTS cooler in person.)

My standards for art aren't high. I want it to inspire me or make me smile or make me think. I like when I look at something and say, "I would have never thought to do that" or "I could never do something that creative" or "Wow, I'd like to meet the person who created this." Simple standards.

Which brings me to "Felt Tip Pen on Paper."

I walked into the room and there, on the far wall, were seven sheets of standard 8-1/2 x 11 inch paper mounted on the wall in seven different colors -- red, blue, yellow, etc.. From afar, it looked like someone had just colored seven sheets of paper with different kinds of pens. From upclose, it looked the same. And then I looked at the "title" of the "art" -- Felt Tip Pen on Paper. That's exactly what someone had done.

There was no pattern or method to this "art." Someone -- I'm guessing a 5-year-old -- had just colored seven sheets of paper with felt tip pens. And then a big city museum decided to hang it up.

Posted by Lara Richards at 5:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)