By
Grant McGee
Philistine: A person who is hostile or indifferent to
culture and the arts, or who has no understanding of them.
She called me a philistine.
Poseur: A person who acts in an affected manner in
order to impress others.
I called her a poseur after we had
parted company.
I wouldn’t call her a poseur while
we were hanging out together, but she thought it was important to label me a
philistine to her Roswell art friends.
Such was life hanging out with
Muriel.
Muriel liked Jackson Pollock. I knew a few things about Jackson
Pollock: Ed Harris played Pollock in a
biopic about him, Pollock had problems with drinking and anger management according
to the movie and Pollock made “big coin” flinging various colors of paint all
over empty canvases. Someone labeled him
an “abstract expressionist” and therefore he “made it.”
Because I thought Pollock’s art was “bullshit”
she called me a philistine. She
practically spit the word out.
There was that time we drove to
Albuquerque to view a display from one of her friends who had “made it,” he was
pulling in thousands of dollars for his work.
We walked into the gallery on Central Avenue. The walls were festooned with little cubes,
little blocks of wood. There’d be this,
say, 8 foot by 10 foot space and a little, say, 2 inch by 2 inch by 2 inch cube
in the center. Lights would be trained
on it. There was a price tag in the
corner of the space: $10,000.
“You’ve GOT to be f#$king kidding
me,” I said in a hushed tone.
“What,” said Muriel.
“$10,000 for THIS?”
“You’re such a philistine,” she
said. She wasn’t smiling.
“THIS is such bullshit,” I
said. “Where is the art in this?”
“You’re supposed to appreciate the
lighting, how the light plays with the angles of the cube,” she said. “Now if you can’t appreciate this just be
quiet and don’t embarrass me.”
I should’ve seen that as a “red flag”
about Muriel but it would be some time before one day I’d snap awake and
realize she and I shouldn’t be hanging around with each other.
I was an impressionist, realist,
romantic art kinda guy anyway.
Years
later as I was riding my bicycle along a county road I spied a piece of bent
metal. I paused and looked at it in the
dust. Was it worth saving? Was it an art treasure waiting to be
developed?
Bent
rebar as art? I suppose if I hadn’ta
hung around Muriel and made those trips to Albuquerque and Santa Fe art
galleries I wouldn’t have given the rebar a second glance. But as I learned, people were paying
hundreds, even thousands of dollars for things made from stuff I saw in
roadside ditches every day. I thought,
“Dang, I could go to Santa Fe do art and make big coin.”
I
remembered not long after I returned from one trip to “The City Different” it
seemed opportunity fell right in my lap.
While out walking I found a foot-long strand of barbed wire with two
chicken-egg sized hunks of concrete on each end. I took it to work the next day and stuck it
on the wall in my office.
“What’s
that?” asked a co-worker.
“Santa
Fe art,” I said.
“It
needs a frame,” she said. “What’s it
called?”
“The
American Farmer.”
“I
don’t get it,” she said.
For
just a moment I pondered calling her a philistine, but I thought better of
it. She probably wouldn’t’ve understood
anyway.
“You
see,” I explained, “The barbed wire represents the American farmer, and one
hunk of concrete is a rock, the other is a hard place.”
“Ohh,”
she nodded her head in understanding.
“I
figure someone in Santa Fe might pay a thousand bucks for it.”
I never
took “The American Farmer” to Santa Fe.
I finally came to my senses and threw it out.
Besides,
I’d learned in my encounters with the art world that success in that realm isn’t
so much about selling art as it is about networking, socializing and making a
small fortune by starting with a large one.
I looked
at the bent metal in the dust. Was this
art in the rough?
Nah,
just a hunk of rebar.
I got back on my bike and pedaled home.
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