Art

January 29th, 2006General2 comments

My brother goes to RISD, the Rhode Island School of Design. He’s getting his MFA. He’s really awesome — marvelously talented, this kid.

Anyway, for Christmas he gave us all DVDs of an art video/music piece he created.

I watched it and for the life of me, I can’t understand what the hell’s going on.

Now, I like to think I know a thing or two about art. I know the movements, I’ll drop by the MoMa, I know a Klee from a Kandinsky. But this DVD is way over my head.

He plays the viola shirtless in front of one of his multifaceted multicolored geometrical wood artworks. And it’s multiple shots composited over each other. And I don’t get it.

“Maybe that’s the point,” a friend pointed out.

Look, it’s not that I don’t appreciate it. I do. It’s just that my mind demands to know what the hell is going on. It needs a story.

But maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s just a performance piece without a story. Or maybe my brother has created this DVD in an attempt to plant a mental virus in my brain that will snowcrash me. Who knows?

Anyway, the DVD is pretty neat, and my brother composed the music himself. Sometimes I suppose that art is meant to be appreciated for its face value only. Maybe the details are unnecessary. I don’t know.

For Christmas I got him a gift certificate to American Apparel.