So, I’ve always had a hard time having any appreciation for what is abstract art. Some of it is just stupid. And I don’t buy the reasoning ‘it’s got to take guts to be able to call something like that art.’ But then again some of probably shouldn’t even be classified as being abstract art.
Does anyone take perception sciences? A topic came up recently about how far you go to call something art. At one point in 1990 some artist decided he was going to drop a brick strapped to a canvass on a rat called ‘Snuffles.’ His reason had to do with the fact that Snuffles was a specially bred rat for reptiles to eat anyway so he was far better of dying by means of brick squishing. To this artists surprise (he was surprised?), Vancouver was in an uproar and Snuffles was saved to live 2 more years and died as a result of breathing difficulties.
The odd story aside. I do have a favorite abstract artist. He’s Russian. He’s dead. He lived 66 years ago. And you can’t not have gone to an arts history course and not have heard of him before. Wassily Kandinsky. Apparently he had a form of synesthesia (a brain disorder that causes you to have involuntary sensory reactions to things…) which basically meant that when he heard different pitches in music he would see blotches of colour. Quite literally, he painted music. I got the chance to got to the Pompidou art museum in Paris and saw some of his stuff. My reaction? This is insane. I love it. I wish I had synesthesia.
