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If you know me well, you probably have heard me talk about my great love of art. It is a love that spans many nations and eras. In the past decade or so, my appreciation of art has transformed from a mild interest to a full-fledged voracity. I recall walking the galleries of the Tate Museum at the tender age of 17, gazing stupidly at the masterpieces like a sleepy cat. At age 20, I tore through the Met one Sunday afternoon, trying to gulp in as much art as I could before my plane left. By the time I was 21, I had developed a academic language for art appreciation and was able to thoroughly enjoy the Louvre. In my adult life, I continue to visit galleries (large and small) whenever I can, and at this point, I have had the opportunity to experience a huge amount of art. I crave art, and I'm constantly refining my artistic ideals. I have the broadest range of artistic tastes of anyone I know. It's something I've worked hard on and am very proud of.
Being a art connoisseur has its frustrations, though. Usually these frustrations arise when I find myself insulted or even assaulted by a conceited artist. Time after time I have enjoyed a piece of art (usually a postmodern piece) and glanced down to read the artist's explanation of their piece. What awaits there is usually a sharp, stinging slap in the face. I have actually seen art that I initially loved, only to find out that the artist's work celebrated such things as bizarre sexual practices, excrement and other base subjects. This weekend, I visited a gallery and noticed a beautiful brocade fabric collage. The piece was somewhat abstract, so nothing could have prepared me when the artist testified that it was her desire to elevate the "lowered consciousness" of housewives with her art. As a housewife and stay-at-home mom, the statement wounded me and outraged me at the same time.
I can't tell you how many books, films, paintings, and other creative works that have been created to bemoan the plight of housewives. Artists have swallowed the juicy, irresistible notion that housewives are repressed, trapped, and, yes, desperate. The stereotype of the starched-but-stale 1950's family is one that artists have created and perpetuated with relish. Artists regard housewives with an odd concoction of sympathy and disgust. Surely these women must loathe their lives. Surely they must secretly despise their husbands and resent their children. Surely they long to escape, but find themselves paralyzed by a traditional society. So they dust the furniture, fluff their hair, and pretend that everything is just peachy. It is a cruel, untrue fantasy dreamed up by conceited people with no personal experience with housewives. It must stop.
Another painting in the collection noted the disapproval of the artist for what he called "the haves and the have-nots." It depicted several couples happily dancing with images of human sorrow swarming all around them. How could these rich people dress up and go out on the town and enjoy themselves in the world full of catastrophic despair? I suppose the artist wants us to permanently lay aside our joy and spend our lives moping for the sick and poor. More likely, he wants us to all "redistribute" our wealth so that everyone in the whole world is sick and poor. Because misery loves company. I am by no means rich, and I am by no means uncompassionate or uneducated, but that just doesn't seem like a feasible solution. I am not inclined to abandoning the things I enjoy. Nor is the artist, I am inclined to believe. It is a vicious, destructive myth that communism is the answer to our problems. In fact, when I think of communism, I think of widespread fear, hunger, disease, and poverty. Capitalism is not the enemy. In fact, it is the best path to health, wealth, freedom, and happiness.
These pieces and many like them display the current culture's disdain for traditional morals and values. In the art we view and the movies we watch and the books we read, we see the erosion of the qualities our nation was built on. Conservatives are mocked as brutish, unevolved clowns. Sexual restraint is mocked as prudish and impossible. Drug abstinence is mocked as a myth (even the president-elect admits to habitual drug use in his youth.) Family life is mocked as a bore or a dysfunctional circus. Hard work is mocked as greed. God is mocked as unwise, unjust, unreasonable, unloving, nonexistent or even dead. Meanwhile, violence is becoming more violent, rebellion more rebellious, and shock more shocking. Eventually, everything is revealed as meaningless, irrelevant, or morally ambiguous. It's a sucker-punch in the stomach that leaves you with empty and with no place to go.
My new heroine is Ginny Ruffner. She created magnificent, whimsical sculptures made from glass and metal. People ask her why she makes something so happy when she could use her art to bring attention to the world's problems. But who among us is unaware of the world's problems? In fact, who among us isn't relentlessly hounded and worn down by images of as world in trouble? Instead, her goal is to bring some joy into people's lives. She is such a ray of light. She doesn't come up with some vague, spiritual, pretentious artist's statement. She doesn't go on and on about "the human condition." She makes beautiful art that makes brightens people's lives. Beautiful, honest art is something of a rarity in the postmodern art world, and it is so refreshing to me.
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