Art 101: Learning the Hard Way

It takes more than Picasso to put this girl in her place.

What separates monkey from human? Homo Sapien from Neanderthal? It's more than cranial capacity and body hair. Art. Art indicates spirit. Art indicates advanced thinking that goes beyond basic survival. Art indicates expression on a different level than calls, grunts and even words. To be civilized is to be artistic. It is the simple evolutionary truth.

I grew up in a town called Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Think prairies, farmers, oil. Think the delicate balance between white trash and Nouveau Riche. Think people who have burping contests after drinking champagne. Think cowboys and Indians. The public art reflected these themes: a lot of white Stetson wearing boys riding bucking' broncos, fields of wheat being caressed by morning sun, and beaded mukluks.

I can't really recall if I went to an Art Gallery when I was a kid. I don't think so. Not that I don't have an artistic family. Au contraire. Our house was full of homemade knick-knacks like my mother's intricate needlepoints of Blue Boy and Lady of the Unicorn and my brother's early paintings of Ferrari's speeding past sunsets.

My point is, if it wasn't for greeting cards, I would have never known who Monet or Picasso were.

I'm a ceiling stare-er. As in - I have spent countless hours of my life starring at ceilings. Born a worrier, even as a child I spent hours starring at the different ceilings in my house wondering how I could stretch my $1 a week allowance to cover more Barbie clothes and if I'd ever win at Monopoly against my brother. My mother hated finding me in the living room not playing, just lying there, eyes open, starring up. Having raised five kids already, she had a pretty no-nonsensical approach toward my odd behaviors and would just say "If you're going to stare at something, stare at something nice, " directing my eyes to whatever was hanging on the wall. So I did. Soon I knew every stitch of her needlepoints that hung in the living room. I had replaced one bad habit with another: now I sat and stared at the wall for hours, in a catatonic state. I loved staring at the needlepoints - it was calm and meditative. My eyes would trace the objects while my mind would review the many injustices I felt subjected to. For example, why were all the other girls in ballet class richer than me and why did Ms. Moran, my social studies teacher, seem to have it out for me? I continue to battle with variations on these themes today. Why does everyone seem richer than me, why does everyone seem to have it out for me…?

When I was twenty and living in Vancouver, my sister returned from a trip to New York and presented me with a framed poster of Picasso's "Girl Before A Mirror". This became my all time favorite thing to stare at and worry to. Like an obsessed Beatles fan, I suddenly wanted to consume everything Picasso and felt at times he was specifically speaking to me. The girl in that painting could have easily been me with her striped face and the one purple eye. The good thing that came out of this - I started to appreciate painting.
When I moved to New York, I went to the MOMA and saw the original "Girl Before A Mirror". I was literally beside myself looking at that painting. I realized these brush strokes were the real brush strokes touched by the hand of Picasso himself. It was the closest I could get to Picasso LIVE! and I knew it.

Recently I made the trek to the New Museum art gallery in Soho with a good friend. What the Artist's Way calls "an artist's date" I think. Don't quote me on that - I stopped reading the book when I realized you had to do exercises and homework and I gave it to a doctor. We saw an exhibit by Tom Friedman. Never heard of him? Neither had I. Tom's art is described with words like minimalist, self-referential, transformative and deconstructing. Feel pukey yet? Jargon like that reminds me of reading the essay that got the "A" in my Critical Theory of Anthropology class and realizing it wasn't mine. In other words, it's a place I hope to not return to. I suspected we were heading into the world of "bullshit art". When I say "bullshit art" I am referring to the kind of art I look at and think, "What? This is bullshit." This is art I feel I could replicate without any inspiration or training or appreciation. One black line down a canvas, a painting that is entirely red, or the worst - a white framed canvas that has but one dot of paint on it. Please. I guess I consider minimalist art bullshit art. I'm not ready for art that comments on art. I don't feel like doing the mental work it takes to fully appreciate the three colored threads the artist has framed and titled "father". I simply don't get it. Now true, I am not the artist. I know not of this creative process. I have never bought a canvas. This is how I envision it: I gaze at a blank canvas while drinking absinthe to conjure up the spirit of Van Gogh. Finally after hours, I brush it with one dollop of black paint and stop. I stumble back to realize that this is it - it expresses everything I have been feeling for the last day, week, lifetime. I am a genius. I giggle madly, leave a message for my agent to that affect and have sex with my doorman. I would say that Tom Friedman's art definitely reflected a person who in my mind lives some sort of madcap artist's life. That being said - his art blew my mind.

If you have had the chance to see this exhibit, I hope you're with me and did find it transformative. A beach ball sized wad of gum made from thousands of pieces of gum Tom chewed and saved - mounted in the corner of the gallery, transfixed by it's own sugary stickiness. Every word from the American Dictionary scrawled meticulously on one sheet of paper. A stunning self-portrait carved out of an aspirin tablet. This is just the beginning. I walked around in awe - this guy was good. Then I came across a blank framed canvas. "Oh god - here we go - he just lost me," I thought to myself. I read the title card that went with it. It said that it was a canvas that Tom had spent over 1000 hours staring at. My worlds of ceiling staring and bullshit art crashed together. It was brilliant. It mocked me on so many levels. It made me realize that my own journey from ceiling staring to needlepoint staring to art appreciation only happened because I've been self-indulgent my whole life and let myself wallow in my own petty problems for hours on end. And Tom knew it. Tom and I had an unspoken clever competition from the second I paid my admission and he won. He knew he could make me look at anything as long as I could look at it and reflect on myself. Shit. Did I really appreciate art or did I just need therapy? I secretly hoped Tom didn't really stare at that canvas for 1000 hours wondering what to do with it. I hope he stared at it for 10secs and realized that it would be hilarious/ridiculous to hang that in a gallery. I wanted to buy that blank canvas. Nothing spoke to me like that before.

So what did I learn? I learned that what I deemed bullshit art really just exposed my own bullshit. However, it created enough drama in my head that I figured it was worthy of words on a page. In essence the cycle continues. I did start therapy, even though Tom Friedman's work didn't necessarily send me there, it was just coincidental timing. The next time I see words like minimalist, self-referential, transformative and deconstructing, I'll try not to balk at them just because I used them poorly in essay exams. I've been humbled. And on the evolutionary note, I think the main thing that separates human from monkey is our capacity to beat ourselves up for being so damn self-involved. Thus art.

Ophira Eisenberg is a stand-up comic from Canada who got a "C" in her college watercolor class.