A few months ago I read an article about how this guy threw a pickle on the ceiling. It is now art and you could pay over six thousand dollars to get the info on how to make your own replica of this art. This piece of art is called "Pickle."
Also out there is a banana taped to a wall with duct tape. This is a piece of art too. It is called "Comedian."
There was a piece of art called "New York City 1" that was displayed upside down for quite a while...before anyone realized it.
If pickles on the ceiling, bananas taped to the wall, and paintings that can be upside down and nobody realizes is art nowadays, I should drop a piece of pepperoni on my kitchen floor and try to sell the information on how exactly I dropped it for six thousand dollars. I will call it "Pepperoni." Maybe I could even get ten thousand dollars. Pepperoni is way better than pickles.
There's a point here, I promise. The point is, this is where our culture has gone. We seem to have a love for the mediocre and even the ugly (I saw the picture of the banana, trust me, if it's art, it's ugly art). We no longer have a love for things that are good and beautiful. We are happy it seems with things that are "neutral" and mediocre. Honestly I have my mediocre things I enjoy. When I was in high school I made a piece of art that you could turn upside down, and you would never know, it was a bunch of different colored squares and two random triangles. I still have that canvas and laugh every time I look at it (maybe I could get a few thousand bucks for that, hey it's got to be better than the banana).
In the past we had pieces of art like Albrecht Durer's "The Adoration of the Magi." https://previews.agefotostock.com/previewimage/medibigoff/0ed6cd7673fd5167909f3e3fff0ab833/dae-11096274.jpg
We also had Raphael's "School of Athens." https://cdn.britannica.com/44/22944-050-20DB2F82/Plato-Aristotle-philosophers-detail-Raphael-School-of.jpg
Look in some older churches and you'll see gorgeous stain glass windows. Archeologists have found beautiful mosaics of the early church. There was the Mona Lisa and the art on the Sistine chapel.
The original Artist, God Himself, gives us sunrises/sunsets, trees, lakes, whales, and so much more. He gives us plenty to work with. Plenty that we can do so much better than mediocre and neutral with.
Let's go back to admiring good and beautiful art, teach it to children, and encourage them to produce the same. Maybe we could get somebody to clean that pickle off the ceiling too.
This is the first of some posts I will be doing about things that encourage the true, good, and beautiful.
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