Speak Out: What Qualifies as Art?
By Maxwell Schwartz
ART TIMES online August 2015
A TWO-YEAR old girl was shown on TV recently (6/24/15) painting an abstract. She was sitting in the middle of the painting with roller in hand. The works were, in my "critique" [sic] opinion, very talented in a certain venue. You could not tell from, let's say, a Clifford Still, Stella, Kelly or…an elephant or monkey painting.
The TV clip showed her at work holding a paint brush (loaded) and a roller sitting on the canvas. Her paintings sell for $500.00. What qualifies as art? Can we call it diaper art?
My granddaughter, Lindsey, while at college, produced a very large (12' x 6') canvas. She put on a bikini, squirted paint on her hair and rolled around the canvas. The completed work looked like a Pollack. PROBLEM: how to get the paint out of her hair. We called local art stores and the paint manufacturers but that's another story.
Does she have a career in bikini art?
Back to the two-year-old girl genius. She used paint brushes and rollers and the seat of her diaper. This is one for the record books.
(Maxwell Schwartz lives in Freeport, NY).