|
Busted At The Art Museum before/after I was in the art museum in Chicago. It was a Seurat exhibit, many collected specimines of his work, his contemporaries and influences. All in all, a great show. And I moved from piece to piece, conte crayon and pointilisim, impressionistic wow, snappping shot after shot with my digital camera. Sans flash. No harm, no foul. What difference could it make that I took flashless digital photographs? Apparently a lot of difference. I felt eyes upon me. I had snapped about forty photos of different priceless works of art when the palace guard snapped on me. "NO PICTURES!" the overweight black security guard barked at me. "No?" I asked. "NO!" and she moved towards me. I slipped the camera into my pocket and moved away. After all, I made it through almost the entire exhibit before they confronted me. My brother encouraged me to continue. He wanted photos of the studies for Seurat's masterpiece, Le Grande Jette'. The sunday strollers. The picture from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. So I started clicking shots of the studies for the work. I eschewed the multiple studies of the ghostly monkey on a leash on the lower right corner of the picture. The ghost monkey is too strange. Its as if someone added it later, to fuck with Seurat. Or, perhaps he had a kibbutzing friend, who happened into the studio one day. "I like the picture! LOVE the picture, babe. And I'm not just saying that in the hollywood way. Love it, LOVE it, LOVE IT. But you know what it needs?" he says to Seurat, a conspiratorial look in his eye as he leans in closer to whisper a secret, "It needs a monkey." And maybe Suerat didnt feel to confident about his monkey-making skills, because it appears nearly translucent. It is, for lack of a better term, a GHOST MONKEY. The guys with me went on and on about the ghost monkey, and how the monkey could never really be there, because if it was, it would certainly be fucking with the dog running nearby it. Which is certainly true. But I think that maybe Seurat was trying to tell us something about time, or catching a scene in time, like a bug in amber smeared on a cosmic windshield, all these things happened, have happened will happen, and are happening right now, as all of life revolves around it self, intersects with itself at all points, and the perceptual moment that is the NOW is actually a great deal longer than an instant that is perceived, but is, in actuallity all moments and all time. Or something like that. Needles to say, I didnt lay this on them. A woman next to me leaned into me and whispered. "You're not supposed to take photos." she said. "Really?" I asked, imitating being surprised. "No." She said, "I heard the guards talking about you, standing together and on their walkee talkee's. They want to stop you and confiscate your camera." No shit? Have we turned into a Society of Nazi's? When did this happen? And why are my tax dollars paying for so much shit that I can't take a picture of? What kind of screw job is this? "Wow," I said, "Thanks for telling me." I put the camera away and moved on. A girl I had been looking at, and who, apparently to the guys with me had been trying to get my attention, lovely, sexy little baby with a gorgeous white pleated skirt, walked past. I looked at the rest of the pictures, and left the exhibit, looking for more Impressionist works. VanGogh. I also wanted to see some El Greco and Goya. It took a lot of work to find their three Goya's. And they weren't even that good. The rain fell on the sky lights. I saw many priceless and timeless works of art. Anyone interested in some pictures?
|
