Shame-even-lesser

Advisory: This post might result in abnormal, violent reactions from all kinds of bloggers who might want to drive their artsy daggers down my back.

Those of you, three of you the last time I counted, who read my blog regularly, might have been happy after reading my last blog entry. Finally a dull, boring medico student had the epiphany of his/her life. That he/she was a loser in missing out on all the good things in life thanks to the drudgery of slogging in medical school and where not. Not just that, I had just resolved to correct this faulty evolutionary path taken by my mind with my lover Vinokur, who had knowledge about all the good things in life.

I took it up yesterday night. Vinokur was tired after another pointless visit to one of the doctors in NYC. Yet, he was anxious to imbibe into me something that he loved and cherished. We started it with a brief lecture (over Skype video for those who just lost themselves in this trans-oceanic communication weirdness) explaining how cave art evolved into stuff like Impressionism and Cubism. I listened to the lecture with multiple, somewhat stupid queries, which definitely interrupted the flow I guess.

He explained to me how the evolution of the painting schools was affected by the development of Photography. As he put it so clearly 'Romanticism was an attempt to fool the eye and photography beat it by a fair margin. Thereby, it led to other artists trying to capture 'what they felt' on canvas.' It sounded scholarly and good. But I was still confused.

I asked him 'Why would an artist want to impose his/her feelings on any scene when the viewer would want to make his own judgement/feeling about that, lets say, with either a photograph or a romanticist painting?'

That I think denoted the point when the lecture became a pain for him. He tried with jest to show me examples of art, with the gracious help of Google image thumbnails, ranging from Rembrandt and Eugene Delacroix to Van Gogh and Picasso to Salvador Dali and Frida Khalo. But in vain.

I loved the work of Rembrandt and Delcaroix and it made sense to me. Even the surrealist stuff looked something like fantasy. But the impressionist and cubist stuff - simply went over my head. For me they seemed under-worked. And I asked him the question (prepare yourself for an hour of shuddering, puking and depression) 'I think that Picasso looks like an amateur art... something that even a kid could do with a set of crayons. Explain to me why it isn't?'

That sort of capped the unfortunate evening for my lover. He resigned in despair saying 'Look Kris, I'm afraid I'm not going to be 'with' you on your voyage to discover and understand the history of art. I can't stand an intelligent, observant person like you opining and ridiculing art which have been acknowledged by the world over after looking at Google thumbnails for 4 seconds! I have been studying them for centuries and I think you are judging them far too early.'

The analogy that he tried failed me. 'Imagine a virgin classical music enthusiast listens to a grunge song by Nirvana. Wouldn't that person think that what he or she is hearing noise?' My counter argument was that 'Look, I introduced to a band Seether a few months back and you were able to appreciate the music which was going on. That was despite you liking Jazz and Classical music more than anything else. In my case I love Romanticism. But still I can't even relate to stuff like Cubsim. I mean, I don't even see the rectilinear shapes on the Picasso's self-portrait!'

The discussion, from there, went to becoming even more depressing for both of us. I suddenly realized that my 'education' had ruined me. I wasn't exposed to stuff that I should have been exposed to when I should have been exposed to. I'm already fucking 28 years old and I have no hope of understanding such art. I don't know anything about literature, architecture and painting. For somebody buried neck down in music, I hardly knew anything about music other than what Seattle Grunge has offered to the music scene.

I felt bad. I felt really bad. It felt like my life just died on me. And I don't know how to start mending.