sometimes its better to act as if something just fell from the sky

for someone who loves travel so much, it may surprise you to learn that i have a HORRIBLE sense of direction. though i still dislike Germany a great deal... i am pleased to announce that i admire Koln (Cologne) for its ease of navigating. upon arrival to this city, i decided to go to two art museums, walk around the cathedral and do some shopping. yesterday was a national holiday so all the shops were closed. and even when i went today, i was disappointed. though i did score a sweet new blazer so i can be just like kim kardashian.
anyway, i was walking around these two art museums thinking about art.
i LOVE impressionism. its my favorite by far. thanks to the holiday, i had the entire museum almost to myself. so i ended up sitting in front of this for almost 30 minutes, just listening. 

i have blogged before about how much i love Monet (click here to get caught up). i love how he had the patience to paint the same subject many different times to show how the light was reflected differently, to show how it changed without changing. i also discovered some new artists that i loved. after spending almost two hours on the rooms with impressionism, i briskly swept through the rest of the museum because no matter how much time i spent in Italy and elsewhere, I just don't have a taste for Renaissance art.
next, i found myself in a modern art museum, Museum Ludwig. i've studied picasso a great deal and seen his work in probably over 10 museums. but for some reason, yesterday, i just couldn't wrap my mind around why certain "art" displays belonged in a museum. is it art? absolutely. i believe everything is art. but in a MUSEUM?? maybe my intolerance for modern art yesterday had to do with the amount of alcohol i had with my lunch. oops.

i listened to the little audio guide as this British voice explained to me that the sea of blues evoked an image of personality and blah blah blah and i thought to myself, "it does??" as i stood staring at a canvas that was literally just BLUE- one shade of blue-BLUE. i was clueless. even with an explanation, i didnt see it. i couldnt. the art was so ridiculous that in one room, a ladder was there and i wondered if it was there for a repair or it was "art." i mean, anything can certainly be art. especially if thats how it was intended by an artist, i was just like, "wtf" all three floors of this place. one installation was a radio. and that was it. a radio. wow. how inspiring. i'm sure if i had thought to put one in a museum, i could be a millionaire. damn.

also, i'd like to ramble about the titles of these works. the title, "woman with a hat" for a renaissance painting that is indeed simply a woman with a hat, makes me wonder, why we think these are the most infamous artists in the world? doesnt art have something to do with creativity? can't they come up with something better than the exact description of what their art is??

example- August Macke, "Man Reading in A Park" 

Oh, that's a painting of a man reading in a park? No shit.

Works titled "untitled" are the worst. if the artist chose not to title their work, or just didn't get around to it, i'd like to know, "no title chosen" instead of "this world-renowned artist couldn't come up with something to call this black canvas we are displaying as art."

example- Christopher Wool, Untitled. 2007. wouldn't it be nice to know what the hell this was so you could at least attempt to understand it? that's the point of a TITLE.

hell, i could be famous. i believe i am an artist. maybe youll see my half finished canvas sitting in my house now in a museum in a few years titled "untitled." with a little number by it and some bullshit description of what i meant the significance to be. you never know!!

all this to say, you know, it doesn't matter how much art you've been exposed to around the world, there is some art that speaks to you and some that doesn't. some that matters to you and some that doesn't. maybe thats what makes it art. 
i'll leave you with the words from one of the pieces of art- installation- done with foil on the windows of the museum, by Gillick. and know that I'm going to stick to my precious Claude Monet.

A man is seen standing by a subway entrance. Above his head three layers of highways cross. He is already sick but watches half of the six walk right past him. Later that night, a woman sits alone at the bar. Close by, another man is sleeping while his telephone rings. Three people sit together some distance away while the woman nods forward and draws increasingly small circles with her finger onto the wet wood of the bar. The people working there step down to serve you. Standing lower than the floor area of the rest of the place they are situated at exactly the right height to deal with those sitting low at a low bar. The woman's dress is made of an artificial fibre. She turns and hurls a medium sized metal spoon towards the three sitting across the room. They feel the rush as it flies past them and some clanking against the wooden panelling of the wall but sometimes it is better to act as if something just fell from the sky.