The Meaning of Life - Paint It Black

In 2013, I watched a funny programme starring Karl Pilkington called The Moaning of Life, where he travelled the world seeking inspiration for the meaning of life in key areas, such as happiness, kids and death.

Karl Pilkington is a straight talking funny man whose perception of life in general is rather weird, so weird in fact that he is genuinely funny. The show inspired me to write about the meaning of life from my own perspective mirroring the subjects tackled by Karl.

This is the man at is weirdest best - simply trying to promote the book accompanying the first series:

See what I mean? He can't even talk about his book without flying off at weird tangents.

Anyway, now he’s back with a second series where he continues to give us his view of life with new subjects. Again I have decided to join in and offer my views on the same subject.

The first post discusses something that I have mentioned before (and ranted about):

Art

Regular readers may consider me to be an unsophisticated barbarian when it comes to the arts, mainly because I have written a few posts about my views on contemporary art, the people who produce this art and the people who claim to understand and appreciate it.

These people are wrong.

It’s true that I am a stubborn old git but my opinions on art are just my own. While I may mock the pieces of crap that hang on the walls of museums of contemporary art, I genuinely have praise for paintings and sculptures that, in my opinion, say something to the world.

For example, I love paintings of real things,, such as landscapes, oceans, storms and sunsets, particularly if these images have been captured in the past. I find that they give me an insight into life back then and I can imagine the painter sitting in the English countryside, using his skill to capture a specific moment in time for future generations to enjoy.

Here’s an example or two by J.M.W.Turner:

These are fantastic paintings.

I feel rather sorry for J.M.W. Turner to be honest because, sadly, his name has been used (or should I say abused) in modern times. His name has been given to an annual contemporary art competition that genuinely makes me wonder about the sanity and intelligence of certain elements of my nation. 

The Turner Prize is awarded to a so-called visionary young artist (under the age of 50 – so its ageist as well) for their new works of art.

However, the art is utter nonsense. In fact, it’s worse than that – it’s absolutely shit!

The Turner Prize shows everything that is wrong with art. These days, it has been captured and held captive by the pseudo-intellectual brigade, who refuse to accept genuine art because, in their words:

“It’s been done before!”

I could vomit in a bucket, throw the contents onto a canvas, empty the contents of a filthy cat litter tray on top of that, spread it around with a garden rake, throw in a few packets of cat food for good measure, leave it to dry and then hang it up on a wall with the title “Cat Chores Gone Wrong” and I am sure that some pillock out there in the world of contemporary art would start gushing over it, claiming it to be:

“The most exciting cosmic, trans-species interactive amalgamation in the myriad multiverses”.

I might just do that, actually!

But of course, art is really any form and while I may mock a pseudo-intellectual, I am certain that he has his reasons for spouting pseudo-philosophical crap about a vomit stain hanging on a wall.

I find beauty in many other art forms, such as music, video and the wonders of Mother Nature. To be perfectly honest, I prefer photography to painting, simply because when a camera captures an image, it is real. In the minute moment that a camera clicks, a picture of a moment is preserved, whether it is a moment of beauty or tragedy. 

For me, like a Turner landscape, we have captured a moment in time that can be preserved for our future generations to enjoy, contemplate or simply fantasize about. 

I would love a person from two hundred years in the future to see a photograph that I had taken and just spend a few moments trying to imagine what was going on at the time. 

Another art form that is close to my heart is music. Music is personal and, like a photograph, can have a special meaning for a person. I still maintain that a catalogue of personal music can act as a unique time machine for a person. Whenever I hear certain songs, my mind searches my memory banks for a specific moment, selects it and brings into my thoughts so that I can relive what is probably a cherished memory, either of a specific instance or a special month or year.

In that respect, music gives meaning to life and the good thing about music is that, like a fantastic statue, a beautiful photograph or an oil painting of an ancient landscape, we can think about our lives, past lives, history and the future all at the same time.

I’m not sure that a vomit stain hanging in the Tate Gallery would have such a profound effect.

I’ll leave you with two songs from my vast collection that are very special to me for reasons that I may elaborate on in future posts:

How about you, dear reader. 

Are you a fan of art?

What art do you enjoy?

Do you think that a lot of contemporary art is rubbish?

What does "art" mean to you?

Art for art's sake

What is art?

I’ve asked myself this question over and over again and have yet to come up with an answer that satisfies me. Officially, the generic word “art” is used to encompass anything that is pleasing to the eye or the ear or invokes a deep sense of positive feeling within a person, be it a painting, a sculpture, a play, a story or a piece of music.

Before I crank up a gear, I am aware of the old adage that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that different objects will summon a variety of emotions and feelings in different people. But I have to ask the question: Is it just me or are “contemporary artists” just extracting the urine?

Let me start with arguably the most controversial topic in modern art: the infamous Turner Prize.

The Turner Prize is named after Joseph Mallord William Turner, an Impressionist painter who died at the age of 74 in 1851, and was recognised as a talented artist. In his lifetime, he painted several masterpieces, including Eruption of Vesuvius, a truly magnificent image of the famous volcano exploding in all of its extraordinary fury as helpless people watch in astonishment and terror. When I look at the painting, I know exactly what I am witnessing; the imagery and colours combine to present a superb representation of the experience of the sheer ferocity of Mother Nature at her most destructive. I would happily hang it on my wall and stare at it with a positive feeling of awe and splendour.

Turner’s name is now part of history and naming a modern art prize after him is an honour and will help to preserve his name in the archives of history. The Turner Prize was first presented in 1984 and is a competition organized by the Tate gallery for what is loosely termed “visual” artists under the age of 50. In 2002, the prize money for winning this prestigious award was £40,000, not a sum to be sneezed at for a young contemporary artist.

You would expect the ghost of J.M.W. Turner to be delighted that his name has been given to arguably Britain’s most famous art competition. However, I don’t think he would be happy at all. In my opinion, Joseph Mallord William Turner, a truly talented artist, would turn in his grave if he saw the candidates for the prize.

The Turner prize raises the debate about art every single year that it is held. I would challenge any person who thought that he could define art to think again given the incredible pile of old crap that candidates submit for this award.

Let’s look at some of the pieces on offer:

"Mother and Child Divided", which basically featured a cow and a calf sliced into pieces and encapsulated in glass cases. I mean, COME ON! What sort of critic would call that a work of art? If you want to see a cow and her calf butchered why not go to a slaughter house and see it first hand?

This pile of crap is “critically acclaimed”, a phrase that so-called intellectuals use to try to convince ordinary people that what they are looking at is not actually two sliced carcasses but in a fact a meaningful and significant masterpiece.

Do me a favour. Anybody with half a brain can see that it is as disgusting a pile of crap as you would imagine it to be. For heaven’s sake IT’S TWO DEAD COWS!

But that’s not the worst one. What about “The Lights Going On And Off”, a “work of art” that consisted of an empty gallery in which two lights go on and off repeatedly. Has the world gone mad? I can reproduce that in any room in my house. How on earth can somebody con even a half wit that this is art?

And what about "My Bed"? This monstrosity was basically an unmade bed, complete with condoms, dirty knickers, stained sheets and piles of rubbish strewn around it. If that is art then frankly I give up.

To me, “work” like this is just the product of an experiment to see how far people can go, fooling the art world that they are a serious genius. To me it is the work of somebody who is pushing the limits of credibility. Sadly the people being targetted are gullible enough to love the products, even though to the majority of people these pieces really are worthy of nothing more than mockery.

It all goes to show that the so-called elite of the contemporary art world are not pushing the boundaries of art; they are merely pushing their luck to the point where they are taking the absolute piss. So many people can see it. A few people agree with me and yet pretend to “get it” so that they don’t appear to be thick in front of the in crowd of art critics.

In fact, in many ways, art critics and art experts are just as bad.

I recently watched a programme on BBC2 where an art correspondent walked through a modern art museum describing the pieces of detritus hanging on the wall in a series of words and phrases that defied logic and belief. One particular painting by Jackson Pollock consisted of a grey canvas with random splashes of colour, dripped onto it in random patterns. I would have described it in the following words:

“Pollock was obviously inebriated when he painted this piece. I would wager that he returned home from a bar, barely able to stand, and thought it would be a fantastic idea to throw a piece of canvas on the floor, open five pots of paint and pour the contents onto the canvas whilst giggling inanely.”

An art critic or expert would describe this painting in the most wonderful phrases, attempting to put himself inside Pollock’s head as the artist expressed his deepest fears and neuroses in an abstract model of pure expressionism that brought to life his innermost feelings and displayed them in a way that his public would identify with; of course the random splashes of red would represent his misguided anger at the unfairness and complexity of life; the black sprinkles would represent his fear as he tries to take control of the rage and succumb to its raw energy; the yellow trails of paint would symbolize hope that he could extract himself from the depths of despair and finally the blues and greens would signify the beauty of nature and life. The miasma of colours would be the struggle to exist and any philosopher would immediately identify Pollock as a true visionary who had captured the struggles of life in a single picture and force us all to contemplate where we are coming from, what our purpose is in life and how we are ultimately going to prevail despite the forces combating each other to prevent us.

WHAT A LOAD OF OLD BULL DROPPINGS!

Don’t be fooled. Art critics think they are intellectual and that the rest of us are neanderthals with no sense of understanding. Don’t be fooled and don’t listen to them. It is they who are the gullible fools and the contemporary artists are nothing short of conmen who extract vast quantities of cash from these so called intellectuals by pushing the limits of ludicrousness as far as they can go.

I suppose in that respect they could be called geniuses; only most of us are not fooled.