Minimalism
Why do so many people
(young ones, primarily)
believe abstraction to be so artistic?
Post-modernism embraced the idea of
art from the artless.
(If that makes any sense at all.)
Now we close our eyes and scrawl
blindly on newsprint or sticky yellow paper
and someone says, “That came from inside me,”
And I say, “I believe you.
Something like that came from inside me too,
only mine ended up in the toilet and I did
not show it to other people.”
Granted, I wholly understand the complexity
they find in their minimalism.
It’s a complexity I embrace, a paradox I admire.
But for heaven’s sake,
(We do owe this our creator)
Might not creativity be at least somewhat fact-based?
Even Picasso’s faces looked like faces.
Warhol’s soup cans were still soup cans.
He was never quoted dramatizing chicken noodles.
Those who did were not quoted.
Similarly, if I read
one more paragraph (and I am being kind)
that lacks direction, I will croak.
Structure is debateable.
But when you begin a group of (usually run on)
sentences in the north and
end them in the north
and for no good reason other than your chest hurt
or perhaps you were constipated,
or nauseous,
then you were probably not really writing.
That is a grocery list. That is an income tax form.
That is effort (to be appreciated) but improved upon.
Certainly I row the same boat, often.
I just have a hard time following an unclear path.
So many people believe abstraction to be
so artistic.
A single splash of black paint on an eight by eleven canvas
to represent one’s anger.
(Or one’s laziness.)
You could have done more with this.
Lets just hang it up in the Metropolitan and
set up a tape recorder
and listen to intellectuals interpret it
hide behind it
and watch first graders stare past it
and watch janitors scowl at it
(“He is making more money throwing
temper tantrums on a sheet of paper than
I am keeping the perimeter of his tantrum clean.”)
and watch curators pretend to like it
or actually like it.
Something about it.
(young ones, primarily)
believe abstraction to be so artistic?
Post-modernism embraced the idea of
art from the artless.
(If that makes any sense at all.)
Now we close our eyes and scrawl
blindly on newsprint or sticky yellow paper
and someone says, “That came from inside me,”
And I say, “I believe you.
Something like that came from inside me too,
only mine ended up in the toilet and I did
not show it to other people.”
Granted, I wholly understand the complexity
they find in their minimalism.
It’s a complexity I embrace, a paradox I admire.
But for heaven’s sake,
(We do owe this our creator)
Might not creativity be at least somewhat fact-based?
Even Picasso’s faces looked like faces.
Warhol’s soup cans were still soup cans.
He was never quoted dramatizing chicken noodles.
Those who did were not quoted.
Similarly, if I read
one more paragraph (and I am being kind)
that lacks direction, I will croak.
Structure is debateable.
But when you begin a group of (usually run on)
sentences in the north and
end them in the north
and for no good reason other than your chest hurt
or perhaps you were constipated,
or nauseous,
then you were probably not really writing.
That is a grocery list. That is an income tax form.
That is effort (to be appreciated) but improved upon.
Certainly I row the same boat, often.
I just have a hard time following an unclear path.
So many people believe abstraction to be
so artistic.
A single splash of black paint on an eight by eleven canvas
to represent one’s anger.
(Or one’s laziness.)
You could have done more with this.
Lets just hang it up in the Metropolitan and
set up a tape recorder
and listen to intellectuals interpret it
hide behind it
and watch first graders stare past it
and watch janitors scowl at it
(“He is making more money throwing
temper tantrums on a sheet of paper than
I am keeping the perimeter of his tantrum clean.”)
and watch curators pretend to like it
or actually like it.
Something about it.
