I spent part of Saturday at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. It's not amazing, but it's got a nice collection for a museum its size, and it's easy to get around. There were some things in it I really loved (a Utrillo, a Sargent, a Ming-era bowl, a beautiful little silver fruit stand, panels from the grand salon of the famed Normandie), but there was one work that really stood out to me that's relevant to my post below regarding God, The Devil and Bob. Part of what makes protests against the creations of artists so pointless and irritating is that artists, being creative people, can find a variety of ways to express what they want to express. For example, they can turn a flip cartoon into a preachy 22 minutes of pushing Christian "values". Or, in the case of my visit to the Carnegie, they can turn the tamest thing (say a large formal portrait of a fully-dressed woman) into something really dirty. I mean I can't be the only one who thinks that William Merritt Chase's Portrait of Mrs. C. is designed in a way that leaves the viewer with a pretty lewd impression. If you don't know the work, this detail may give you an idea - but it really has to be seen in person to get the whole effect.
Posted by armand at January 31, 2005 11:32 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Culture