Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis
Day 159: Inverted Fountain a photo by allankcrain on Flickr.Leslie and I went to the Contemporary Art Museum yesterday, and I honestly couldn't tell the difference between most of the featured artist's work and some guy just randomly slapping paint on a canvas. I'm a fairly artsy guy, right? I understand composition and art theory and such. I even get lots of abstract art. But this just looked completely random. And not even "I am making a statement about chaos and randomness in the universe", but just "Fuck, I just realized that I was supposed to deliver nine huge canvasses to that gallery today. Where the hell did I leave my paint?" Here's CAMSTL's page on the exhibit: Richard Aldrich and the 19th Century French Painting.
The title refers to the four 19th century French paintings (on loan from the St. Louis Art Museum) that they hung next to Aldrich's stuff. It kinda drove home that "This isn't really particularly good" impression I was getting.
It makes me want to attach little plaques to other things in the art museum that are currently Not Art to convert them into Art. Pic--and its pretentious description--related.