Griffin and I popped into the MFA last week for a quickie visit en route to Dick Blick's for a replenishment of our supplies. Things to do while at the museum:1. Check out the Impressionist Collection of Scott M. Black in the Rabb Gallery (which I really wanted to see, but had somehow managed to forget to see for some bizarre reason the last time I was there)
2. Visit my beloved Sargents (which I didn't do the last time I was there because, frankly, my family can only take so much of my endless cycles through the 19th c American wing)
3. Pay a quick visit to a Van Gogh that I hate but had just read about in detail in a new book and now wanted to see once again up close and personal, if only to follow up on the history I so recently learned about this painting and much like the proverbial bear, see what I could see, and
4. In the Torf Gallery, give a 15c Italian Renaissance exhibit a chance after having loudly poo-pooed it for looking utterly crass a couple of weeks prior as I had peeked my head into that gallery (I read arts and entertainment reviews on the radio for the Massachusetts Disabilities Commission and after reading a wonderful article about the glories of this exhibit, decided to give it a chance after all, even though the initial pieces just inside the gallery door reminded me of the artwork typical to cliched Italian restaurants, but still far short of the chianti bottles with the melty candles in them).
The Black collection was nice, though a bit heavy on the Pisarros (not one of my favorites). The Sargents, as always, had me swooning in my boots, the Italian Renaissance exhibit mostly sucked, just as I thought it would (so much for the glowing reviews), though I'm not sure if it was more to do with the fact that it simply wasn't an exciting collection of work (perhaps there's a reason why these pieces had been shunted into storage for more than 50 years at the museum?) or because reliefs of Jesus being crucified and Mary holding Him as a baby just aren't my cuppa. I don't know. And, of course, as it wouldn't be a trip to the museum without me forgetting something I had planned to do, I completely forgot to check out the Van Gogh.
Perhaps if we had hung around a bit longer than an hour, or perhaps if I had even a smidgen of self control, I might have remembered to do everything I went there to do. Perhaps not. I do have a question, though. While I was wandering through the Impressionist exhibit, Griffin (who hates virtually all Impressionist works, every last Sargent, as well as the Dutch Masters. God help anyone who gets him started on that subject) decided to check out the gallery next door which currently has on display an exhibit of contemporary installations. Moments later, he stormed back into the Rabb Gallery and loudly announced that it wasn't fair that while his work wasn't selected last month for a fine art competition, submissions he had worked long and hard on, there was an artist in the next room who had been chosen by the MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS Boston, no less, for an installation of old paint cans, coffee tins, bread crumb canisters and used kentucky fried chicken buckets, all turned upside down, punched through with holes and strung with lights that ran on electric toothbrush motors. Where was the justice, he wondered? And what exactly was it about this ugly pile of shit that made the grade? And what about his did not? He had, I confess, interrupted my own silent rant as I studied several of the Impressionist works and wondered how these particular pieces, by rather unknown artists, came to be worth many millions of dollars and hanging in a museum, when they truly weren't very good specimens of art? I was thinking (and I don't mean to sound arrogant here, I'm merely making an observation) that my own paintings are, as a general rule, better executed and more alive than these select pieces, so why is there no interest in my work and why am I not selling buttloads of work, for any price (I'd be happy with a couple hundred bucks for godssakes)? And how exactly does one become an investment as an artist? Who gets to decide what is good art and what is not? What's worth the money, what's worthy of a spot on a respected museum's walls and what gets ignored and passed over? Griffin and I both spent the rest of our visit at the MFA grousing endlessly and sometimes probably a bit too loudly for the museum's comfort about the unfairness of it all in the world of art and how as artists we are all either shit on and abused or completely ignored. I have to say, he's definitely my child (except for that whole Sargent-hating thing. I can't imagine what the hell he's thinking there). Actually, come to think of it, it was probably my tirade through the many galleries that obliterated from my mind the thought of visiting that Van Gogh I so wanted to see. Serves me right.
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