art pills -- smarter already

A hundred years back this country was mostly rural. People lived with animals, carried water into the house, faced trips to the outhouse in all sorts of weather. Sometimes they’d resent city folk with their paved streets, indoor conveniences, opportunities to go to high school, such as that. There arose a genre of whimsical anecdote meant to level the field a bit, an ongoing dialogue between a visiting ‘city cousin’ and the experience-wise ‘country cousin.’ 

So one day ‘city’ asks ‘country’ how come you know so much, and ‘country’ says “simple -- it’s these smart pills we find laying in the grass.” After a couple of days ‘city’ says he’s “beginning to suspect those smart pills are really just goat turds.” “See there,” says ‘country,’ “you’ve already become more intelligent.” Turns out to be a little parable about self-reliance and the tough-love foibles of wide-eyed gullibility. It could be a story about art. 

Cy Twombly’s “Untitled” 1968 sold on November 5 in Sotheby's, London for $70,530,000. (Photo: Sotheby's) - See more at: http://indianexpress.com/photos/lifestyle-gallery/record-breaking-moments-paintings-by-picasso-van-gogh-in-the-top-10-most-expensive-artworks-auctioned-in-2015/7/#sthash.hmdMe38P.dpuf

If this piece of art, “untitled,” was the size of a piece of note paper it would be adjudged by all who saw it as the daycare product of a hopelessly challenged sixty-five IQ, not that there’s anything wrong with that. If you, worldly and sophisticated, like art of similar ilk I’m not affected, but must admit it’s way over my head. Just a seventy million dollar goat turd to me. In the end it’s a matter of self-reliance, of individual judgement, even of personal expression that determines what sort of art you like, what sort of art you buy. 

Cy Twombly is out of your league, anyway, so consider something closer to home and think in terms of hundreds, maybe thousands, instead of tens of millions. Attributes which you might admire can be found in the art of individuals from somewhere in your neighborhood, and the amount you pay probably won’t be reported on the news. In this case it should be the country cousins, all of us around here, who turn out to be too smart in the first place.