Let’s put the authority argument first, for they still seem to keep some value in this age of mobs taking the power. The poet Paul Valéry, refined human being and one of my literary heroes, affirmed in his diaries
As it happens often, I did not allow myself to clearly think of it until I heard it from a celebrity. But oh, how I agreed then. Museums are disgusting places. The way in which works of art lay there aligned is simply not natural. It is a shame. And the way in which people go from one to the next one, in many occasions literally as in a conveyor belt… What has the highness of art, the subtle experiences that art can grant you, to do with that?
Museums are a shame as a concept, but the capitalist stance of ‘more and more and more’ has turned things even worse. Typically, you have to pay a fortune for a ticket to see in one day an amount of works of art that might take a month to simply look at, not to mention a serious consideration. An absurd ‘all-you-can-eat’ whose final result is that you leave the building after a few hours, feeling tired and miserable (after two, three hours looking at pictures or paintings, no matter how good they are, there is a moment when the eye becomes numb), and with a subtle feeling of guilt because you are wasting the value of your ticket.
You’re not. It’s just like when they only sell the megabig hamburger, and you only need half, so you have to throw away the other half or redimension your stomach, or when they sell you the macrocomputer with 50 programs that you did not ask for and will never use. The principle is: the consumer will absorb the impact of our excesses.
The situation is twice as sad when we talk about art. I don’t know; as a bit of an artist myself, I cannot help imagining the painter, taking weeks or months or years to finish his canvas, in search of a certain aestethic emotion. I think of his problems in the in-between, his struggle with the so-called ‘normal life’, the gorgeous day when he finally can tell ‘I’m through’. The private presentation to friends, then the official presentation, the reactions, the success or failure…
…and then I think of that painting becoming no. 62 in a row, between a Renaissance virgin and an African mask… or even worse, between other pictures of the same age but quite worse, maybe paintings of someone the painter hated when he was alive.
And it doesn’t matter at all, as long as the conveyor belt keeps going. Sad, isn’t it?
I don’t like museums. They are cemeteries. The only consolation is that art is too alive to let itself be buried like that. But it is a waste.
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Hi Nacho,
This is a really funny post, but very real and true; the commercialization of art and the snobbism of people that creates a game of imaginary circumstances, just like the games we used to play when children but then we knew they were games, now people create a life around this “adult” games.
I’m gonna had to print this post because is the long awaited explanation of what’s wrong with museums and why I don’t like them…now I know why, thank you
Hey Raul,
knowing that this post was useful to you makes me satisfied beyond all expectation. As an art lover, I find the situation not easy, and your comment gives me great comfort because, as you’ll surely have experienced too, to write this kind of ‘against the grain’ opinions, sometimes one must overcome a certain ‘environmental pressure’ (the fear of being called ‘radical’ and the like). Your comment, thus, comes as a great, encouraging reward for my effort. Thank you