In class several weeks ago, we heard about a painting called "America's Most Wanted." This painting (to the side) is part of a project of "Most Wanted Paintings" and "Least Wanted Paintings" made by Russian emigrant artists Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid. "America's Most Wanted" and "America's Least Wanted" were exhibited at the Alternative Museum in New York.
America's Most Wanted is certainly American--it portrays George Washington, majestic mountains, animals, clear water and the sky. It is not a favorite painting of mine but it does capture my attention and represents the type of artwork I enjoy. It reminds me of the Hudson River School, my favorite American school of art, where grand paintings of nature were depicted, with even the leaves of every tree being painted in detail. Grand, majestic, beautiful, concerned with nature, inspiring -- this is what art means to me, first and foremost. Such depictions inspire me and make me appreciate what is beautiful.
On the other hand, we also have "America's Least Wanted" painting. This is the kind of abstract art that depicts nothing in particular and which either means something deeply symbolic or can mean whatever it may to whoever is looking at it. While we are currently learning about abstract art in my Humanities class and I can sometimes appreciate the way artists seek to depict something internal and mental rather than something external -- it is still not the kind of art that I want hung up in my own house. It may inspire me to reflect upon something but often the confusing shapes and colors are more distractive to me than they are inspirational. The beauties of nature, the beauties of landscape paintings, are much more inspiring to me than are contorted images and shapes on a canvas. I want to look outwards, out at beauty that uplifts and inspires me. I don't want to look inwards at images that may disturb be or reveal something mentally disturbing about myself or society. 
I am with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman in nature - not with the abstract art of modernism. I am one of those who believe American art has lost something better and more beautiful found in the Romantic art period. Not that we haven't gained additional insights from Freudian pscyhology-inspired artwork; not that modern art does not help us reflect about important things as well. But you would never find me enjoy a museum of exclusively modern art nearly as much as I would a museum of exclusively romantic paintings. We need models - beauty - to lift us, inspire us, make us look ahead and beyond ourselves to something better, something to strive towards. Not just something depicting our mental psyche. Komar and Melamid - you've proved it again: I AM American!
No comments:
Post a Comment