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Enough already! I am tired of reading all the mumbo jumbo from “art experts” who lavish praise on grotesque and bizarre abstract paintings.
To me, it’s all just “vain babblings.”
To prove my point, consider this: Years ago, some pranksters exquisitely framed an ordinary house painter’s canvas drop cloth and entered it into a prestigious art show in Chicago. This commonplace, ordinary “floor covering” took second place.
I rest my case.
All the superlatives written by pompous art critics lauding the wonderful works of Doris Laughton, Andrew Long (“Return of the Splats,” Spotlight, July 27) or Clyfford Still aren’t going to convince me that “abstract art” is an aesthetic endeavor. I’m not buying it!
Don’t think that because I mock “abstract art” that I am not artistic. I am. In the summertime when I’m hot and sweaty from cutting the grass, I’m very good at “drawing” flies and mosquitoes.

John Cardie, Westminster

READER COMMENTS

I hear you man. All I ask is the city not dump this junk all over the town. It's the same thing with the new Art museum. Some jerk has an inferiority complex cause the got a degree in art and they couldn't get a job in New York so they have to inflict this stuff on the rest of us. From what I have seen they want to do the same to all of Civic Center park. Make it an unusable, post-modern eyesore that will make a splash in some Art magazine. Thanks for nothing guys.

Usually junk like that breaks into two categories: mineshaft modern or foodfight on canvas

Soooo, this, next to obscene fat people, is the next thing in line you unimagining, self appointed morality zealot judges want to ban. On the other hand, why not?, banning things has become the new vogue of the morality and health religion and their self appointed priests and, the public is so apathetic about freedoms just now, you just might get away with it.

Not only that. This is an excellent example of how the Rocky favors idiotic sensationalistic letters over those that present important issues for dicussion.

Well, there has to be some excuse for that memorial to the old West Colfax junkyard they threw up on 13th Avenue. Doesn't there? That painter's drop cloth can hang right alongside any Jackson Pollock trash they have; and no one will ever know the difference anyway.

Hey! Here's an idea! The city could even get some use - and some extra revenue as well - out of all that ugly waste space. Just dump the left-over trash from city projects inside; and let the artsy-fartsy crowd pay off bond issues with high priced admission tickets to come in and be artists-for-a-day themselves, by using the garbage to make their own "artistic statements".

I bet it would make more money than a landfill anyway.

don't look at it, fools.

tj,

Unfortunately, the junkyard monument is rather difficult to avoid having to look at, since 13th Ave. and Broadway are both something of main streets in the area; and at least some of the junk pile hangs out, rather perilously, into space, over traffic areas.

So, aha, then It is in the publics justified interest in their right to enjoy unfettered transportation that we find a way to defeat the preceived garbage and morality police. Poetic somehow is it not?

Actually, Far be it from me to ban art like the "Gayliens" outside the convention center. I couldn't care less.

Just don't ask for my tax dollars to pay for it... or any other art. Let someone raise the cash and then build it. but not from taxpayers.

Art is in the eye of the beholder.

Unfortunately, the public purse strings regarding the funding of the items selected are usually controlled by a small group of individuals who don't always consider the public perception of art. Rather, they attempt to be innovative, bold and seek to "educate" the public on the modern art elite's concept of art.

Of course, on the other hand, we have a hard time getting anyone not from the self described art elite to serve on any boards or committees who select the art for public display. I believe that's the catch-22 we face with public art.

Allen Campbell decries thought police and artistic censorship. i am sure he is willing to use his tax money to support the cross of jesus covered in human waste and the Bible being in a toilet filled with urine. However he more then likely is the first in line to denounce anything done to the Koran in the name artistic endevor.

True that art is to provoke thought and intellectual response. How does a string of lightbulbs over a chair and drop cloth covered with paint splatter do this.

What happened to the masters and painters or sculptures that could create an actual work that had beauty and talent?

Allen Campbell,

You make an unwarranted assumption. I have no interest in bans, or police, or otherwise linking criticism to any form of censorship as such. For those who enjoy old Colfax junkpiles, I simply offer one of many possible uses for what is there. For those who think Jackson Pollock was an artist of value, I simply suggest that his"school", and the "works of his school" , be acknowleged accordingly.

The junkpile eyesore is, in fact, more or less unavoidable, when it comes to the matter of having "to look at it". So, too, is the little kid's spilled pencil box, all stuck back together in vertical form, that is called the "library"; and the pile of guano dropped down by the legendary Roc, and called the "art museum".

In theory, the City of Denver would have been better off without them. in fact, they are there.

Faut de mieux we are stuck with them..

10:36 AM anonymous,

Once upon a time the Rocky Mountain West had such as Bierstadt, Georgia O'Keef, and several other artists alive and producing. Then, the artsy-fartsy East Coast crowd caught on; priced them out of sight; and took everything off thataway. (Except for a few down in Taos, maybe. Or what's left of what used to be a fairly nice little colony in the Green Mountain Falls area, outside of old Horsemanure Junction down I-25.) Out West, hyar in Injun fightin country, we got left with the likes of the Pena & Webb circus tent, etc., etc. I think it's called: "Money talks", or something like that.

"Art" that has to be explained is a hoax. Just because something is in a frame, doesn't make it art. "Important" art these days is pompous garbage.

Skill, technique, and originality stand on their own, and fortunately, there are still some really good artists out there today, they're just not popular with the geriatric self-appointed art mavens who make selections for the city using public funds....

Posting 10:36.

So you are sure of what I like and don't like and also sure of what I think of art and that I approve of this and that and----- just what kind of an assuming idiot are you.

Or perhaps your a long range mind reader who got me mixed up with another idiot like yourself. You're nothing more than just another of those bush league thinkers that use hypothetical questions that presuppose within them the answer without having a clue about the person you are writing about.

I you think such juvenile baiting works, you're wrong. It only serves to expose your inability to arugue points and, resorting to statements posed as questions, is an old and tired trick that rightly took on the name of yellow journalism decades ago.

At least you could try to come up with something original, well, no. That is to much to expect from someone who dosen't even get the point of what I said in the first place.

OG, you are waxing humorless in your honorable old age. Think that thee are the only one to utilize off the wall, meaningless prose to make a minor observation of the possibilities inherent in the subject matter of a missive to intent on a subject. Notice, if you will the cioned term, " perceived garbage and morality "

A staving man's perception of restaurant garbage is held in higher esteem by him than moral garbage because finding something edible in the former has greater possibilities than the latter.

Of course a religious zealot's focus is the opposite. He holds higher esteem for the moral garbage because it is the thing that he is fasting about.

Heheh,

It's fun to wax on about each others subjective tastes eh?

If you don't get it (abstract art), forget it. There is plenty of art featuring poker-playing dogs, black velvet Elvises, sicky-sweet Mary Engelbreit & Thomas Kincade, and adolescent-fantasy D&D art. Or you can just sit back with a cool one and watch wrestling and NASCAR and not have to think about a thing.

Allen Campbell said: This is an excellent example of how the Rocky favors idiotic sensationalistic letters over those that present important issues for dicussion."

Mr. Campbell, I couldn't agree with you more.

Jimi99,
I think the point many here have been making isn't as much that all abstract art stinks. I'm a graphic designer myself, and for the most part I have no interest in the niche, outside of a few select pieces. I think what people, including the original letter writer, are irritated with, is the pretentious self-annointment of certain abstract artists who, in all honesty, have little artistic talent, and instead gained notoriety more because of their networking skills.

Art doesn't have to be literal to convey meaning, I will agree. But it should still evoke a powerful emotion other than bewilderment. Art that confuses, despite the modern broader perception of it post-dada, isn't really art. As such, considering the subjective nature of most modern (and mediocre) abstract works, where no real emotional or literal message is conveyed, I tend to agree with Dravur. If the city wishes to display it, fine, but taxpayers shouldn't foot the bill.

I'll take a Norman Rockwell any day. Now that's true talent.

Well I still like my poker playing dogs and Elvis on felt. As someone said above art is in the eyes of the beholder. Just don't spent public money on it...unless it has puppy dogs and kitties

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