Casual Art

You may know that I’m a terrible museum participant. I rush through galleries, ignore the captions and exhibit explanations, and have definitely, more than once, muttered “I bet I could do that” to a companion. I beg your forgiveness. Despite my behavior, I do love going, and mostly because I slacked off on posting last month, I thought I would start September off fresh with a fluffy post of pictures and vibes. My question for you: do you think there’s such a thing as casual art?

I ask because, as someone who takes making art seriously and viewing art flippantly, I wonder if I should be either more self-conscious about my attitude or work harder to understand what I’m viewing. I guess, as both an artist and art-viewer, I highly value the immediate and visceral experience over the intellectualized one, but some art is made to think about, not to feel. With those pieces, I feel the need to view/experience “casually” rather than dive in deep.

Is that just lazy?

At the MET, where all these pictures were taken in August, I paid specific attention to the female form and how it was portrayed and valued, especially because we started out at their special exhibit, “New Woman Behind the Camera” which featured 120 photographers in order to explore “the work of the diverse “new” women who embraced photography”. I’m a sucker for any kind of portrait. The reflection of humanity re-created really does it for me, and looking at how women are perceived made me reflect on how our stories get told through the eye of the beholder far too often.

Perception is frustratingly the name of the game, and I guess that links right back to the idea of casual art. Anyway, that’s all I got. I hope you all have been keeping dry in the recent inundation of wet. The soles of my feet are still dyed blue from my long walk in ankle-deep city water, but today the sun is shining. Here’s a little song for you. Go out and play! I’ll write something a little less rambly soon.