Untitled (with red rage)

A few days ago over on Mancunian Moon, I posted about a trip to The Menil Collection in Houston. While worth a visit, there are some aspects of 'art' that I just don't get.

We moved swiftly through the surrealist section and came to the abstract art exhibit featuring artists such as Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. Ok so far, at least their art is fairly recognisable but as we moved further into this section I got a little confused by what I was seeing.

In my view, hanging a piece of black cloth on the wall is not art. It doesn't take a lot of thought, or four years at art college, or thousands of dollars in donations to create something like that. It added absolutely nothing to my experience and the only thought it provoked was why someone would consider such an item as art.

Then we came across an empty glass cube. On closer inspection, it was indeed empty. And that was 'art' apparently. It was basically one of those display cases you get when you have a football signed by your team and want to display it while keeping it safe and in good condition. I could get the exact same item from Academy sports for around $60 and recreate the exhibit in my living room. But we weren't done there.

Perhaps the most pointless exhibit we came across was called "Untitled (with green sides)". It was the title, or actually, the lack of title that made this item completely pointless. The artist couldn't even be bothered to come up with an arty name for what was basically a green shelf hung on the wall. Don't be fooled by the brackets in the (none) title either, not just the sides were green. In fact, the entire shelf, sorry, piece, was green. This was nothing I couldn't buy at Home Depot but somebody somewhere had paid good money for it and decided people like me should see it!

In the next room was a piece that may have rivalled the green shelf for sheer pointlessness. Get this, right, imagine you had a cardboard box, and then you broke it down so that it was flat and no longer a box, but just a piece of cardboard. Now hang it on a wall. Job done. You're now a (con) artist.

I can't help thinking about the old fable of The Emperor's new clothes here. People with too much money being convinced that an old table cloth or empty box is a piece of art and worth thousands of dollars.

Maybe I'm just in the wrong business.