Art is bollocks. Discuss.

by NATALIA HAWK

Dear Art,

I’ve tried to love you and understand you and appreciate you. I really have tried. But I’ve had enough. And after seeing a few of your stunts, I’m onto you.

I know how much you love to set a scene, so picture this. Paris. 1998. I’m seven, and my well-meaning family has dragged me to The Louvre in the hope that the experience as a whole will somehow be beneficial.

I get excited about the big deal that is the Mona Lisa. Especially after spending hours in what seems like the world’s longest queue to even get through the front door.

Finally, FINALLY, we get to the Mona Lisa. And she is tiny. And you can’t get up close because there are about a million other people trying to do the exact same thing.

I take one look at the crowd and the teeny tiny supposedly Best Painting To Ever Exist up there on the wall and feel a sense of profound disappointment. Frankly, it’s all rather anticlimatic. I wander off, trying to figure out what all the fuss is about (and trying to spot Madeline, having not yet grasped the idea that she is a fictional cartoon character).

That experience was the start of many years feeling intellectually inferior because I Don’t Get Art. That somehow I’m living in this world where everyone else sees A Work Of Art That Is Amazingly Brilliant and I see An Awful Lot Of Paint Sloshed Around On An Expensive Canvas. I feel proud of myself when I understand a Leunig drawing, for god’s sake.

Don’t get me wrong – I can appreciate a beautiful photograph, a stunning watercolour landscape or a nicely drawn portrait. I can even appreciate something a little more abstract if I understand the story behind it. I reblog pretty things on Tumblr ALL THE TIME. In this day and age, that’s almost the equivalent of owning your own art gallery.

But I start to get really confused when I see things like Mark Rothko’s contemporary artwork, “Orange, Red, Yellow” (right) which recently sold for just under $87 million. Which is a HUGE sum of money, especially when you consider that my first thought when I looked at it was, “but I could have done that?” What’s even more confusing is that everybody else seems to understand why it’s worth so much. It seems a bit like the Emperor’s New Clothes to me, only with a really large orange painting.

I have a feeling that there’s a lot of other people out there that are just like me. People who have been walking around for years, proclaiming “I’m just not an arty sort of person and that’s why I don’t get why this large pile of twigs in the corner of the gallery is art!” And maybe everyone’s too scared to admit it.

So here are some other things that I’ve seen lately that have made me say “that’s art? BOLLOCKS.”

1. The Birkin bag (see the top of the post), photographed by Tyler Shields, who took to it with a chainsaw before dousing it in petrol and setting it on fire. And taking pictures of it. Yes, I get that it’s a social commentary on materialism and all that. But to me it just seems like a huge waste. Couldn’t he have made his point without destroying a perfectly good $100,000 bag?

2. The artist who was mourning his dead cat after it was killed by a car – so he turned the cat into a helicopter. Yes, you read that right. A HELICOPTER. To be more specific, the cat is attached to a specially-designed flying mechanism that is now on show at an art festival in Amsterdam. That’s an exhibition I am not particularly keen to see.

3. ANYTHING containing faeces, which seems to be becoming a bit of a theme. There’s this art exhibition, where the artist has put a “series of resin spheres” made with her own faeces on display. It’s something to do with reclaiming body processes.

There’s also The Shitting Machine, which is on display at MONA in Tasmania and inspired by Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It’s exactly what it says it is – a machine that makes poo. A globalist statement, apparently. (And it smells like poop, too. Authenticity is key, people.)

Look, maybe I’m just bitter and disillusioned. In year 12 I spent six months doing maths subjects and trying to memorise things like quadratic equations, while one of my friends did art. Two nights before his major work was due, he stapled a bit of barbed wire to a wooden frame and wrote a piece about how it represented the loss of identity or something similarly misleading. AND GOT EXCELLENT MARKS.

I’m sorry, Art. I don’t mean to be harsh and I don’t deny that there are some truly amazing artworks out there. But sometimes, doesn’t it seem like anyone can just staple a banana to a white canvas, name it something obscure like “Jimmy Goes To The Circus” and call it art in an attempt to make a buck?

But what do I know anyway? To me, a pair of well-made shoes is art. Someone else might find the meaning of life in that helicopter cat. Who am I to say what’s art and what’s not?

I just don’t want to feel so alone anymore. Surely someone out there doesn’t really get it either?

Is there something that you just don’t understand?