Of Man's Ability To Appreciate Art.

• Yu (judy) Hung, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2011

A man was staring thoughtfully at a painting which hung exactly point two of a degree off its straight axis. Continuously rubbing his chin, shifting from foot to foot, wondering if the feelings conjured up inside were adequate enough to determine the value of this so-called masterpiece. The painting itself was of a line, a rigid linear stroke on top of a wash of blue; something one could hardly call art, but it was - a line, anyone can draw a line. It all comes down to how the emotion is arranged or aroused when an acclaimed critic comes to attach a price tag. They have no right price peoples’ creativity yet they do so anyway. What makes my heart better than yours? What is art when anything can be called a masterpiece?

The man finally gives up his search for meaning and moves onto the next painting. Like a sinner straying from the light he winces into another uncomfortable state and ponders the next deity who will rule his subconscious thoughts. At this rate, it will take him all but three minutes to view the whole room; enslaved by the next valentine dot, succumbing to the next blank eye. Maybe that is why one sees many nomads around the gallery, always travelling in search of inspiration to live off, to feast and feed off. In their livid unconsciousness, they will remember this painting by so and so and twitch in ecstasy as it corrupts their mind to form butterflies and rainbows. They will writhe while salivating onto restricted chests and pray, oh pray to see more so they can usurp the being that used to rule their morals. They will try and give their useless thoughts, praising a man who claimed he suffered from seizurous fits of insanity to people who don’t really care at all. The nomads will move from one painting to another and as they do, they will sing in their gothic voices ‘what is an opinion when anything can be correct?’ to a background of ringing bells, the noise of sycophants.

Now this man was a man of logic. He found surrealism quite distasteful and cubism quite unattractive. He thought if one wanted to capture the essence of an object unforsaken, take a picture, immolate it to ashes and place that in a sealed bottle to hang around one’s neck. Now that’s art for you, he would laugh. With half his heart he wanted to understand the concept of art but it was too frustrating. He found cats looking like dogs and men like fish. In the gallery was where labyrinthine hands fished for bespeckled patterns and darkened oblivions to cry away vivid nights long gone. It was where magic happened in the form of ochre tongues and russet hair, where potted plants danced to retro music in rooms too cold to think. The man though it absurd that the leather sofa islands were so distant from one another but he guessed it was just ‘chic’ (heaven forbid Him using that nameless word). Finding no meaning and no point in what is nothing and what will forever be nothing, he huffed out of the gallery never to step foot in it again. Why try to understand something when it can be mistaken for anything?