Spud's Rambling Rants

I was surfing channels the other night and I came across a news report on a 4-year old girl whose paintings sell for tens of thousands of dollars. This got me thinking. You've seen it before; the elephant that can draw using its trunk, the autistic 30-something that supposedly paints with "depth and realism". This girl's painting's weren't special. Exceptional colourful, yes, and maybe eye-catching; I'll grant you that. But with "maturity and deep artistic ability"? She's a four year old, for God's sake. She'd rather have a lollipop than spend a few hours painting. Seriously, they aren't more than finger paintings on canvas, only they're really big.

Art is so overrated. You can compare people's "appreciation" and understanding for art with many things. Like owning a valuble coin, but keeping it because it's worth a lot of money, even though you could sell it for fifty grand. Or, even better, describing wines. People give wines characteristics simply for the sake of it. "Fruity, with a medium blend of flavor. Starts light, but has a solid finish". Sorry, but I classify wine into two catagories: white and red. They all taste the same within those catagories. Art is the same thing. People are too complicated; somehow we enjoy the attention that people get for creating something popular, as well as the proud feeling of being overly anylytical of something that really has no depth behind it.

Not all art is undeserving of acclaim. Anything that conveys realism parallel to our world is fine by me. Portraits, intricate brush work on landscapes, other famous paintings. But if you start getting abstract, you get steadily closer to the line of "What's the point?". And finally you get the people who tie mounds of pantyhose together as a "free sculpture" and recieve worldwide acclaim. Human culture has gradually shaped our subconscious mind set into something it wasn't 200 years ago. Maybe even earlier than that. We say that we have the flu, even if we don't. We follow celebrities' lives so we can find out that they underpaid their chaffeur by 15% last Tuesday, even though they never have and never will have any effect whatsoever on our physical existence. We read "classic" books in high school and interpret innocent scenes to be subtle representations of the author's (gasp!) abusive childhood. Guess what, people? Maybe the ducks in the pond don't represent childhood innocence in Catcher in the Rye, like half a million English teachers say they do! Aha! Not feeling so good now, eh? No uncomformities to keep you contented!

It's just a four year old.

No. This can't be true. Lindsay Lohan is getting her own Barbie doll. Slit my wrists, please.

http://entertainment.msn.com/movies/article.aspx?news=181562

This surely must be a sign of Armageddon.