story time, boys and girls

Once upon a time, on a rainy Saturday afternoon in April, a girl and her mother went to Midtown to visit three art galleries…The girl was in an Art History class and needed to complete three gallery critiques to be turned in on April 30th. Unfortunately, this girl was a bit dumb about art and felt even dumber after visiting the three galleries…

First was the 20th Street Art Gallery. This was her favorite gallery because it wasn’t as confusing as the others. There were friendly people around and even a little white puppy named Sugar that was wearing a red sweater and licked people’s feet. The gallery was showing an exhibit called 50-50-50, where 50 artists painted 50 paintings in 50 days. For the most part, this gallery was interesting, although she did run into a particular piece of work that left her confused and upset. It looked like black and white blobby things and even though people around her were discussing the depth of the blobby piece of work, she couldn’t understand what the heck was supposed to be going on.

Moving on…Next was Exploding Head Gallery. The gallery was awkward and too quiet. There were other students wandering around also doing critiques and looking equally as confused. The girl tried to make sense of a set of oil paintings depicting Northern California, but again, everything appeared blobby. She did, however, enjoy a different set of paintings that looked a lot like straight photography, just painted with oil paints. She left this gallery quickly because everybody seemed to be glaring at each other.

Finally, the girl and her mother stumbled into Appel Gallery where there was no one present except for a bored looking man sitting behind a counter. The gallery was showing digital chromogenic photos of France, and while she enjoyed a couple of photos, the rest seemed bland and had no focus. Only those couple of photos she enjoyed screamed, “France!” to her. The rest screamed, “What?”

Those three gallery visitations took less than an hour to complete. She did not enjoy this project because it made her feel stupid. The girl enjoyed critiquing books and films and television and music, not art that she could not understand. This project is worth 300 points, so the girl has no choice but to try her best at critiquing the blobby artwork she encountered on the rainy Saturday afternoon…

(PS, No. I haven’t uploaded those Anaheim photos yet. >_>)