All in Favor...

This past week was loaded with things to tell you about.  Some of course, weather related, some involving poltergeist, and a couple personal observations.  I’ve selected one that has a little of all those things, except the poltergeist.

It doesn’t start at the beginning of the week, but rather just an hour ago.  I woke up thinking about art museums.  I enjoy going to art museums and seeing the great paintings, but more than that, I’m impressed by the monumental event that it represents.  Here is a very large and graceful building with marble floors and velvet ropes, housing wandering guards and the whispering public, all enjoying paintings that the majority of Earth’s art viewing population has agreed upon is the best of the best.

It is that agreed upon  part that captivates me.  Paper or plastic is a major decision for a lot of us and to get a small group of people to agree upon anything usually takes a well-polished orator with a cliff full of ocean view condos and the promise of a continental breakfast.  So how in the World did the art viewing population ever agree that Goya is good, he can stay, but Perchburger doesn’t cut it, he’s out?  And where and when did this take place?  Really, I’m curious.  I don’t want to sit through a semester of art history to find out but I think it is a monumental event when looking at humans and their struggle to make decisions.

(for example)

We arrived a bit early yesterday at a wedding reception.  Because of the weather we had left ourselves plenty of time to get there.   When we walked in we had our choice of where to sit from approximately 80 large tables.  This was tricky; the longer we took to decide, the more variables we came up with.  We wanted to see what was going on,so we didn’t pick the far back corner but hen again we didn’t want to be right next to the dance floor.  The far left of the room was too far from the music and the wedding table and well it just got more and more complicated from there.

We finally chose a table in the center of the room but back against the wall.  This spot seemed central to everything without being in the way of anything.  Mentally exhausted, we plopped down in our chosen seats feeling proud of our decision.

We chose wrong.  The tables filled up quickly and soon the place was full with everyone settled in.  The table right next to us lit up their cigarettes while the HVAC system gathered their exhaled fumes and pumped them into a cloud that hung suspended over our table.  Had we not been busy gagging we probably would have been very impressed with how this cloud defied the laws of physics and didn’t waft away to any other part of the room.

(OK, back to the topic)

I guess each of us likes or dislikes art for our own personal reasons. All of the variables that affect our decision making process are not constants.  They change as our mood changes.  They change with different types of lighting or the use of one color over another. 

The next time I’m in the art museum I think I’m going to work my way over to one of the wandering guards.  They spend hours and hours, day after day in there and over the course of their working life have run the gamut of various human emotions.  They have seen those painting well lit and in the dim of closure.  I’ll simply ask one of them,

“So when you go to a wedding reception, where do you like to sit?”