The state of the art

I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art yesterday and was once again shocked to not see myself featured.

It's been two years since I sent the Met an email and they still haven't responded. I'm beginning to think they don't want to exhibit my work.

Now, I'm no da Vinci, but neither is anybody else. Da Vinci had the monopoly on being himself, so I figure it's no issue that neither I nor my paintings come up to his level.

You don't even have to be da Vinci for your work to earn as much money at auction as his does. Jackson Pollock made millions by slapping some paint on a canvas and calling it a day.

If anything, I'm an even better bargain than Pollock. When I make a sandwich, I drip mustard all over the kitchen floor, but you don't have to pay me extra for name recognition.

How come I don't get praised when I do a bad job cooking? If it's modern art, I ought to have doubled the value of my house.

Maybe the art world has changed. Back in the day — here I'm talking about 150 years ago — redefining boundaries meant drawing instead of painting. It was celebrated.

Today, if I redefine mornings by refusing to work, I'm considered lazy. Call me bitter, but I sense a slight contradiction.

Yet apparently, laziness sells, too. Just look at the blank canvases that The Kunsten Museum of Modern Art exhibited back in 2021.

You know what that exhibition was called? "Take the Money and Run." No kidding.

Now I'm sure that the really good stuff breaks limits, not the bank. Or maybe it's the other way around.

I thought you had to paint Sistine-Chapel-level creations (as done by da Vinci, unless I'm wrong, which happens about once a decade) to stand a chance of making a few bucks.

Nah. Turns out you can just tape a banana to a wall and walk away with a cool quarter-million.

I'm just kicking myself for not picking up on this sooner. In the time it took me to realize I don't actually need technical ability to make money, I could have taped up a whole fruit basket.

Admittedly, I may not be the best judge of what makes stuff worth seeing.

All you have to do is say the mask scene from "Predator" shows creative genius and suddenly people think you don't understand art.

So maybe I shouldn't be so critical. Maybe I just don't understand what these creators are trying to convey.

I've heard the argument that modern art strips things down to their essentials. I've even heard that art can be anything, so long as it means something to the viewer.

All it needs to do is evoke an emotional response.

Running out of mustard to put on a sandwich evokes an emotional response from me, but I'm guessing that's not what most people consider artistic.

Still, what's art if it doesn't break boundaries? The next time you visit The Met, I would be honored—embarrassed, but also honored—if you surreptitiously taped this column to the wall.

Given the plethora of stuff of questionable value in there, they might even put a display case around it. I'm sure that would cut the mustard.

Alexandra Paskhaver is a software engineer and writer. Both jobs require knowing where to stick semicolons, but she's never quite; figured; it; out.

Previously:
• 05/16/24: Rounding one's corners
• 03/22/24: Gone loopy
• 03/05/24: Philosophy rocks