(4/2021) Art is a serious thing. It is such a serious activity, with such a serious crowd of enthusiasts, that somehow the very word conjures up pictures of stuffiness, superiority complexes, and elitism. Some would say that such ideas are natural, and that man is inclined to think them. Others would hold that stereotypes such as these are ridiculous and founded on the ideas of nothing more than closed-minded busybodies. Who knows? I’m just a guy that happens to enjoy looking at pretty things and writing an article on them for a newspaper that you happen to be reading. I’d be lying if I said I ever put much thought into the matter.

I can remember one experience that made me put a little thought into the subject, however. It was quite a while ago, long before all this insanity with the pandemic happened. I used to browse through brochures to pass the time back in my junior year study halls in high school, a habit that became the origin of this experience. It was late in a hazy March afternoon, the exact kind that makes a man want to take a break from his work and stare out a metal framed window. In the process of downing an entire water bottle and taking my twelfth break that hour, I spotted a brochure on top of a bookcase. It was a large picture of a banana with tape on it, captioned Better than Picasso: The Future of Art. Now, you would think my first thought was that a lousy banana with tape could never match Picasso, right? Well, then you’d be wrong. Picasso was kidding himself if he thought his art was decent. What kind of guy gets the idea that some random blocks and circles equal up to something pretty just because he slaps them on a canvas? I have cousins that aren’t even in elementary school yet that can do better. You may as well patronize them, help a local, and save yourself some money, if you catch my drift.

Regardless, I digress. It’s a nasty old habit of mine. Anyways, I saw that there was a date and time for it, that being April 1st at 1:30, and that the brochure itself was for an exhibit at a museum. It was scheduled for the weekend and given the options of spending the day mowing the lawn or traveling an hour or so, the choice wasn’t hard. After whiling away the rest of Friday like any usual day, I found myself traveling the distance to Nowhere, Pennsylvania. It’s a pretty little city, with more than just a statue on a hill. After spending twenty minutes or so in that curse laid upon man ever since the invention of the automobile, commonly referred to as "lunch rush traffic," I finally arrived at my destination in the middle of the bustling city. It was a warm weekend, just the kind you would expect people to be out enjoying. Nonetheless, between the tall buildings whose metal structures gleamed in the sunlight and the sweltering heat that cooks up that smell that all cities appear to have, it was the perfect time to try something new. I managed to park my car in a garage and walked down onto the streets below.

The distance to the art museum wasn’t very far, probably a brisk walk of some ten or fifteen minutes. Arriving outside the front lobby of the museum, I could only stand in surprise and look up at the thing. You see, that was just the word to describe it: a thing. One would think that an art museum would reflect the beauty inside it on the outside, but the reality is the unexpected opposite. This palace of art was nothing more than a massive trapezoid, made up of disproportionate metal panels and glass inserts between them. The only redeeming parts were the banners draped on the sides of it announcing the new exhibit, almost like tarps thrown over an old, rusty sedan. Shocking right? Not really. I’m sure your senses have already been abused into insensitivity by this sort of metal chicken coop all the new architects love these days. I know mine have, so I’ll just spare you the details. Once I walked through the painfully triangular door and bought my tickets, I ascended the spiral staircase straight to the third floor and to the exhibit I came to the museum for.

At first, I was intrigued. The employees really had put all their effort into the display. Everything was so smooth and modern. Each case around a sculpture was the same dull metallic color, each pane of glass it supported the same opaque shade. Every picture frame was a familiar patterned wood, and every pin that supported them a gaudy plastic. All the displays were on flat, white surfaces and scattered across with no order to them, not even in the relation of the subjects to their neighbors. Walking under the sloped cardboard archway that labeled the exhibit, I could only think about how beautifully modern everything looked. It had no order, except for the fact that everything worked so hard to not have order that disorder became the very order of the display. The ugliness produced by it was part of such a grand attempt to be ugly that it was incredibly beautiful, so much so that my heart felt moved.

That would be a moving sentiment, right? I agree. Regrettably for us both, however, it wasn’t a true one. If art in modernity is good at really anything, it’s not in possessing beauty. From the exhibit itself, I would have assumed that the greatest skill of modern art was tasting good, and not in the sense of the culinary arts. Nailed and taped to walls were all sorts of fruits and vegetables. Copycats are something that not a soul can prevent, especially in art. Someone does something, no matter how strange or shocking, and everyone loves the attention they get so dearly that they attempt to recreate it for themselves. The catch is that you can’t shock people the same way more than once, but nobody ever seems to figure that out. After spending enough time looking at the variety of fruits, I moved on to the section of sculptures contained in small display cases. They were interesting enough, in the same way that a toddler finds a broken toy interesting. Regardless, jumbled pieces of metal put together with screws can’t possibly be considered art. I would have compared it more to a construction project gone wrong.

Dissatisfied, I went to the café on the rooftop for a snack and a drink. Seeing all of that fruit posted to the wall and made me more than a little hungry. As I sat on a vinyl stool and waited to place my order, an older gentleman took the seat next to me and leaned back. "You enjoying the exhibit, kid?" he asked.

"Not really, to be frank. It’s not like I expected." I replied.

The man chuckled. "See, that’s the thing. It’s all about the unexpected. I mean, it’s April for crying out loud. None of this is supposed to be expected. The unexpected is humor in art."

"Really?" I asked, struggling to see the reasoning behind his idea. I remember my next words exactly as I said them. "Humor. It’s a funny thing."