A couple of years ago while on vacation in Thailand I
watched an elephant use watercolor brushes to paint a picture of a flowering
plant. She was pretty good too.
Of course, elephants are very intelligent. Usually chimpanzees are rated higher on the
animal intelligence scale but I’ve never seen them paint anything. Monkeys are smart though that’s for
sure. I saw an example of how smart they
are years ago at a wild animal park near San Diego: A crowd of 30 or so people were gathered in
front of a mote. They were pointing and
laughing at a huge male gorilla. This
gorilla was sitting on the other edge of this mote, as close to these people as
he could get. And lying next to him was a
huge pile of fresh gorilla poop apparently just deposited in view of this crowd. I supposed this gorilla just had to go and
wasn’t too concerned about who was watching.
Elimination of bodily waste is, after all, something we all do. In this country we just have a bit of a
problem doing it in public. People in some
other countries aren’t so fussy. The
laughter increased and that’s when the gorilla started glancing down at his
pile. He looked angry to me. His head moved back and forth from his pile
to the crowd, crowd to his pile. He
reached down and grabbed a huge gob. His
arm moved up and down as if he was judging its’ weight and possible flight path
then looked back at the crowd. I moved
back a few yards in anticipation. The
rest of the people must have been dropped on their heads when they were babies
as they just stood there. Suddenly, as
expected, he stood up and flung it at the crowd. They screamed as they were splattered with gorilla
crap and ran. Too late. The gorilla ran too… as fast as he could to
his little house.
Hilarious…and somehow this brings me to the subject of
modern art.
I’ve been to the many of the best modern art museums in this
world and much of what I’ve seen I’ve enjoyed and appreciated. However, I’ve also seen much of what I (and
maybe you too) refer to as “monkey art”.
Here’s my definition of monkey art:
I’m not all that creative and I can’t even draw a decent stick figure. A monkey could probably do as well. So, if I can do it, a monkey can too: monkey
art…as creative as gorilla crap. Here is
picture of a recent example I just viewed at the Tate Modern in London a few
days ago:
This was painted by Philip Guston 1913-1980. Born in Canada but worked here in the
U.S.A. It was described this way: “A dark shape, suggestive of a head, emerges
from a grey background. Guston referred
to this and other paintings made in the early 1960’s as ‘dark pictures’ and
also as ‘erasures’. As he explained, “I
use white pigment and black pigment. The
white pigment is used to erase the black I don’t want and so becomes grey. Working with these restricted means as I do
now, other things open up which are unpredictable, such as atmosphere, light,
illusion – elements which do seem relevant to the image but have nothing to do
with colour.”
Nope. What a
load. Monkey art. I could do it. Heck, a first grader could do it. Quit trying to bullshit me Mr. Guston. Tate Modern:
you suckers.
Here is another one probably costing the museum thousands of
dollars:
Three blank all white canvases? Please, I don’t care what this “artist” says
about this. It’s crap. Monkey art.
I could do it. Tate Modern: you must have had your head up your asses to
buy this. Fools.
Finally, this:
This “sculpture” was done by Thomas Hirschhorn, a Swiss,
born in 1957, works in France. It’s
called: Candelabra with Heads, and was
done in 2006. It’s made of wood, brown
tape, bubble paper and painted plastic heads.
Tate Modern says this about these pieces of “art”:
“Hirschhorn is known for his sculptures and installations
made from everyday materials such as cardboard, plastic and paper, bound
together with brown packing tape. This
work was originally part of an exhibition called Concretions, a term from
geology and medicine that suggests the gradual growth of a solid mass. Hirschorn related the theme to a broader
social and spiritual petrification. Here
the faces of mannequins seem to be emerging from – or submerged into – larger
biomorphic forms.”
Tate Modern: you’re a
biomorphic and petrified solid mass coming out of my ass. What a load of gorilla crap. I could do this but it would entail sitting
on the toilet for hours. My legs would
fall asleep. It’s monkey art. You clowns.
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