OK, here's a minor rant on critics, in passing, but more to the point, when, where, how art is viewed matters.

No matter what the elite art critics say, a urinal is just a urinal and a pipe is just a pipe (Also no matter what René Magritte says.).

Having said that, remember it takes one (pompous ass, {I'll spell it out, me}) to know another one (pompous ass) and also remember Sturgeon's Law; Ninety percent of everything is crap, and paraphrasing his corollary, including this, my, posting.

Realtors and retailers harp on location, location, location & they're right, place and time are extremely important for appreciation. The time and the place can make all the difference twix that's nice, to instead, a jaw dropping bug eyed wow!

Some sixty or so years ago I was in an art museum in Chicago, long enough ago I can't remember the painting title, let alone the museum, and unexpectedly, walking up a set of stairs, found myself looking at an, El Greco handing in the landing above me. That was a a jaw dropping big bug eyes wow!

A couple of other a jaw dropping bug eyed wows; Blue Boy at Huntington Gardens. Ruben's Bacchus at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) and a yawn, Warhol's Marylin, maybe a hundred prints of same, filling a museum wall in Saitama , Japan.

-which segues to the point I started aiming at (& no, not the 90% thingy but the location thingy): On another trip to Japan I was in the Ohara art museum in Kurashiki, took a right turn from the bright windowed hall in to a darker room and, as my eyes adjusted, a predominantly blue painting on the far wall eclipsed everything else in the room (Bacchus, in the Hermitage, hit me the same way, by the way.). As I walked closer & could make out the details, it was Jackson Pollock's 'Blue' or 'Moby Dick'. Previous to that I'd pompously place Pollock right along side the urinal and the pipe but 'Blue' at that time, in that place, (& sigh, using another parenthetical aside; 'Blue' mostly blue, shapes floating/blending therein, colors bright,objects hinted at, -highlighted in a dim room in Japan, a land of islands surrounded by deep blue sea,, Fujisan, The Wave, the floating world...) it worked, it was art.


On a later visit to the Ohara, the room was being remodeled and ‘Blue’ was, temporarily out in the hall, still the same painting, of course, but it’s impact was lost in that location, although it was ‘nice’.

& OK, I’ll cut Magritte some slack on his ‘Treachery of Images’ (This is not a pipe) but Duchamp’s urinal is still just a urinal.

&& I hope I did fit in 10% of non-crap in this posting.

&&& some of you might enjoy looking at the work of a dead friend of mine that was a contemporary of Pollock, et al: skondovitch.com