A PRETTY FRAME AND A PRETTY TITLE EQUALS ART?

"I knew it. I knew it," I said aloud, with a mixture of glee and satisfaction that I'd been right all along but too hesitant to express my views lest I reveal my perceived ignorance of modern art.

What had prompted my outburst, although no one was around, was a showing on the TV screen of a painted picture that had won high praise by art critics. It had a nice frame and a wonderful title, "Symphony of the Trees."

I looked and looked at the picture for some semblance of trees as I know them. The only things remotely appearing to be trees were some thick overlapping black and gray perpendicular streaks. No limbs. No leaves. At the top of the perpendicular stalks, perhaps a better word than streaks, were blobs of various shades of gray and black, the same color used in the stalks. Having, perhaps run out of these colors, the painter had added a splotch of red in an upper right hand corner of the cluster of stalks.

I turned my head sideways to get another angle, thinking the art gallery hanger had mistakenly hung it upside down and the artist had really meant it to be a pile of weathered logs.

I faintly remembered from my long ago "Introduction to Art" teacher that she had said something like this: "When a person succeeds with his lines and streaks and colors the observer will imagine the scene which the picture looks like." It doesn't take much to imagine Vermeer's "The Cook." She is the cook. Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" is Mona Lisa--eyes, nose, mouth, hands all in their proper places.

The TV commentator went on to explain that the picture had been painted by a four-year-old and entered at some showing as a joke. However, it was for sale and brought $400.00.

The art critics would never admit they'd been tweaked. There would be all sorts of explanations to make someone like me feel even more ignorant about modern art. "Can't you see the strength, courage, faith and hope of these trees successfully reaching toward the sky?" they'd ask. To which I'd only think but not say, "There isn't enough soil for this number of so-called trees to sustain them to reach that height. Therefore, see how dead they look? No limbs. No leaves."

"But symmetry," the critic might continue. "See the beautiful symmetry?"

"You mean balance and harmonious arrangement?" I'd reply, faking armistice knowledge.

"Yes, yes! By George, you have it."

I wouldn't have had it. The splotch of red in one corner did not, in my opinion, make anything balance. Some of the trunks, or stalks as I prefer to call them, lean one way. There is nothing else in the picture to keep one from wishing there was something to prevent the appearance of leaning, or looking as if it were hanging crooked on the wall.

The picture was quickly gone from the TV to be replaced by news from Bosnia, but my mind lingered on, wondering if I'd at last been vindicated of my suspicions of the hoax modern art is trying to perpetrate on us. There are all those critically acclaimed splotches of paint put on a canvas by throwing paint in front of a working fan or propeller, all those overwhelming eyes detached from a face and appearing on the thing or elsewhere, all that collection of tomato soup cans, or was it beer?

I turned Bosnia off and went upstairs (They are free of clutter now) to delve into the huge camel-back trunk in which I've kept all of my son Steve's school memorabilia. I found the rolled up sheets of finger painting he'd done in kindergarten. Among many other sheets there was one done in blue checks. Why hadn't I ever framed this? Look at that strength and courage it must have taken to cover the whole sheet with one color! (Or was he given just one color?) See the subtle shades, here the blues speaking of sapphire, turquoise and lapis luzuli, there suggesting the shades of a clear sky, the sea, chicory flowers, bluebirds! And look at the symmetry of the little squares, some big, some little as if done by all four fingers and thumb at one time, first going this way and then that way in order to achieve balance. The suggestion, I'm sure, was to be left to the eye of the beholder. Maybe it would be blue checked gingham, blue checked linoleum, Beale Street intersections, a veiled reminder of a blue-checkered life!

Keep watching. It may show up, nicely framed, at the Down Town Gallery. The title? I'm working on it. "Ecstasy in blue?" "Blue Mystique?" "Mediterranean by Moonlight?" Oh, there's so much in a nice frame and a lovely title. Maybe $800.00.

REJOICE!