Obviously, everyone’s definition of “art” is different*. While I don’t consider myself to be an “expert” do tend to form opinions of art pretty quickly. In general however, I’m happy to give other folks the benefit of the doubt. Fir instance, I happen to live in a part of Chicago that up until about 7-10 years ago was considered an “artist” neighborhood**. To its credit, the ‘hood has been able to hold onto many artists and galleries despite the wave of gentrification that swept through at the turn of the century***. The nice thing about this is that there are two big arts festivals here every year. The bad thing is that some of the art is really really awful.
For instance the first two years I went to the one festival there was this "artist" who lived in the big artist loft-building where the festival was held. Like all the other artists he was exhibiting his works for sale, with the walls covered with canvas after canvas. Unlike the other artists however, this guy’s main theme appeared not to have changed since he was twelve. Each painting was done in bright colors and consisted of a nude woman holding a machine gun (and usually wearing an expression of rage and fury) while a fighter jet or tank or assault helicopter swooped/drove by in the background. If I were an art major, I would say that his general message appeared to be “women are scary, but for some reason they will come into my house and take their clothes off if I tell them I’m an artist”. It was pretty bizarre. I briefly considered re-creating an example of his works using my skills at Microsoft Paint, but most of the sites that came up as sources of raw material in Google Image search had domain names that frightened me.
So instead, I present something that is probably still questionable “art” but is a hella-lot funnier and certainly more creative than the “gals & guns” dude – tampon art. Next thing you know someone will come out with condom art…oh…wait, I guess they already have.**Case in point, doing a search for “art” in Google images nets you images of George Clooney and talking dinosaur comic strips.
** Cheap rents for big spaces in unsafe areas
*** Why is nobody using this term to describe the transition from the 1900’s to the 2000’s like we did describing the transition from the 1800’s to the 1900’s? Dammit, I’m starting.
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