Des Moines Art Center... Thoughts

I went to the Des Moines Art Center on my vacation.  I had high hopes for it. I’d been once before and stumbled onto a traveling exhibition of a photographer whose work I was familiar with and that I liked quite a bit. This time I was not so lucky, however. I did take pictures of the classical stuff I liked, the two kids on the divan, I wish you could see the detail, that’s part of what I like on that one. The detail in the hands is so fine and well done and then the edges of the clothes, and the divan, they just all sort of get ragged and haphazard and unrealistic. The focus was on the people and they’re well painted and defined, but their clothes, the inanimate objects in the pictures are more ideas hinted at that truly well depicted. I like that. It’s cool. It wouldn't

have occurred to me to DO it, but on seeing it, I liked it. Also, the one on the left looks like a young Benedict Cumberbatch to me.

There’s a painting of a French girl in a blue dress at a table, drinking tea perhaps. Click it to enlarge so you can see her face. It’s beautiful to me. The artist and I don’t remember who it was, beautifully captured her face and I imagine anyone looking at it would bring their own interpretation of what that face is showing. Is she tired from a long night up with a kid? Was she just crying at the loss of a lover? Has she just gotten done working and is having a cuppa before she has to get back to it? What’s her face say? It says all those things and it’s where the interpretation of art being a personal matter is important. They’re all right answers because they’re all objectively possible answers. I love that. It’s a painting I suspect I would see differently every time I looked at it. Well done stranger.
I looked it up and it's called At the table (French girl) and is by Louis Ritman and is from 1918. Now you know.

I’ve also included the Picasso and the Matisse. The Matisse is the cartoon looking one in bold primary colors of a person facing right. It doesn’t look well painted and makes me feel nothing. It and the Picasso are included because they’re famous, not because I consider them good. Oh, I’m sure the art world is correct in that they ARE good, but I don’t like either of them. They leave me feeling as hollow inside when I look at them, as Chinese food leaves me hungry half an hour later. This is a common problem with me and "great" art. I don't understand it. A painting doesn't have to be super real for me, that's what photographs are for. But, for me to appreciate it as more than just "meh" it has to be something or look like something that took skill and not something that looks like something I could have done myself. "Oh, Rich, but you didn't and that's the difference!" Yes, well. The reason for that is if/when I have done I wouldn't show anyone. I certainly wouldn't try and sell anything I did that looked like the Matisse on the right. Seriously, look at the sausage fingers there. No. That's not something I understand. My short-coming I'm sure, but not for me.

Which brings me to Picasso. It's obviously a Picasso. I recognized it as soon as I entered the room. I'm sure you do too. For one thing I wasn't aware we had a Picasso in the permanent collection at the Des Moines Art Center and that's actually pretty cool. That being said...


Just because I recognized it, and recognize his work doesn't mean I'm able to appreciate it however. Yes, I know this is his. I know he did it on purpose. I don't know why though. I'll just leave it here rather than continue showing my ignorance. This isn't meant to be a screed against non-realism.

Sculpture is a cool one for me. The terminal one with the two white figures standing at what is made out to be an airport terminal reminds me of my travel when I used to work and fly a LOT. There were always people who looked like this. They hated the travel and were beaten up by it. I loved the travel. I loved airports and the bustle and the feeling of expectation. Traveling to me is like opening a Christmas present. The time it takes to get there is the time it takes to unwrap the package. It’s hours of as of yet unrealized expectation and anticipation. I love to travel. I like GOING to a place. I like the act of movement and the motion of it.

I’d considered a train vacation like a land cruise where I got on the train and went out three days, turned around and came back. It would have been all motion, all travel, all me moving through time and space and no being stationary or in one place and it would have been fantastic... except the train schedule was such that I’d mostly be doing it all at night. For most people travel is like it is for the two people in the art installation and it’s a drudgery, a terrible pause between being where you wanted to be but had to leave, and being where you want to go but aren’t there yet. It’s like a commercial break full of bad jingles. I don’t feel about travel that way, but lots of people do. So, for them, a train ride that was 27 hours of night out of the 36 hours of the trip would be fantastic, They could sleep it all away. For me? It was enough to cancel the trip. I don't want to miss the movement. That’s the whole point.

The picture of the man being thrown from the horse, the Pegasus, I took that picture because it reminds me of the myth/legend of Icarus. It’s one of my favorites. You know it. He and his father, Daedalus, were trapped by a king on an island in Greece and to escape Daedalus created them both wings made of feathers and wax but when they sprang from the window to fly away over the sea, Icarus, caught up in the excitement of the flight, of the movement, of the travelling, flew too high, too close to the sun, and his wings melted and he crashed into the Aegean Sea and drowned. I love that story. Sure, he died, but look at the fun he had before he did. I know the lesson isn’t James Dean’s famous quote, “live hard, die young, leave a beautiful corpse” but that was sort of the takeaway. Now, I’m far too cautious for that. I’m a planner and I play it safe a lot. I’m really one of the most boring people you’ll probably ever meet. But that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the daring in others. It’s something I wish I were better at doing but it’s not how I’m wired. (That might not actually be a James Dean quote by the way. I just feel like it is.)

I've saved it for last because it was the reason I was disappointed. The museum was having an exhibit called, I think Wanderlust. There's a theme going through the art world right now of garbage. Literal garbage. Trash. This exhibit was literally trash. Oh, here's a field? Let's gather up all the garbage in it, wrap it in a twine and set it in the middle of the floor. Oh. So powerful. So poignant. Such garbage. I'm sorry it's garbage. I don't need to know the artists story to know it's garbage. I don't need to know what the point is they're trying to make. It's garbage. You picked up trash and dropped it on the floor. A thousand prisoners do it every day alongside roads in every state in the country. They pick up trash and they move it somewhere else. You call it art. They call it community service. In both cases it's trash being moved around and calling it art is pretentious and annoying. You're not fooling anyone. This trash I DO understand. It's not a lack of understanding that is my problem. I understand perfectly well and I don't like it. I don't like what it is. I don't like that it's being foisted off on us as art. I don't like that museums are wasting my time and their space with it. It's garbage and if I'd had to pay to see it I would have left without seeing anything. I will never pay to see trash. I throw it out all the time and am well rid of it.

Trash as art was done in 2017 at Reiman Gardens. It was well presented and some work and creativity went into it. Did I like it? Not as art, no. But I respected the time and effort that went into doing it. I enjoyed looking at it. I enjoyed the discovery of seeing it and watching the swordfish resolve itself into the detritus of life as I got closer. That I liked. I DO think the whole "trash as art" thing is overdone though. It's just lazy at this point.