National Galleries of Art

I took my mom to the National Gallery of Art, which is divided into two wings. One wing was designed by John Russell Pope, who also did the Jefferson Memorial. This wing houses all the good art. The other wing was designed by Satan and houses the evil art of bad people. Now, I have started to recognize several things about art museums. One of the most important things to realize when you go to an art museum is that the talkative little placards to the side of every artwork were placed there by Satan to deceive you. So, for example, the work below is allegedly called Woman with a Parasol. That's what the little placard said. The placard also reminded me that it's by a famous person so you should take it seriously and pay close attention to the title. But I don't know if the artist ever gave it that title. I don't think it's about the woman, or the parasol. It seems clear to me that the painting is really about the sky, grass, and wind; and when I got home I looked it up on pixiv, and sure enough a Japanese artist who's about my age had not only concurred but actually drawn up his own beautiful vision of it.

left: 1875. right: 2008.

There are many traditional practices of art museums, such as the placards, which are attempts to constrain you and rein you in to the curator's idea of good art. Please keep in mind that museum curators are Fascists. It is nice to be free and recognize your own yearnings and satisfaction without people telling you what to do. For example, here is a simply horrible painting.

I took it from the Museum of Bad Art, right? I must have, with the pea soup-colored garden and the matching face? This is actually van Gogh, and it was displayed in the gallery as if the curator's intent was to show the famous brand names and not the good paintings. I think he was having a bad day when he made this one. He should have painted over it.



The sculpture gallery of the good wing was a wonderful place. My favorite sculpture was an Italian work which showed a woman standing in the wind. It looked like she was about to leap up. When you got really close to her arm, it felt like you were being elbowed out of the way by a real person. Her hand is to her ear because she's listening to something.

How obscene that this was being housed in the same building as this turd of a sculpture (below). Apparently Satan was unsatisfied with owning a whole wing of the National Gallery of Art, and has started to encroach on the good wing as well. What's wrong, there wasn't enough good stuff to go around? That's seriously worrisome...

There was also a ladder hung from the magnificent dark green pillars of the rotunda. "Hey, someone left a ladder up there," I pointed out to my mom. Turns out it was an "installation" by the same artist who excreted the turd. Someone needs to get that ladder down from there. Your tax dollars are paying for this, folks. The military pays $3,000 for a toilet seat, and the NGA pays $3,000 for a ladder. Someone get Banksy in here to take it down. Maybe he can drop it off at a construction site for them to use. No wonder he's so popular-- he's the Robin Hood of the art world.



Rather than showing you the ladder I would like to show you a totally awesome picture. I can't find it on the NGA website anywhere but it belongs there, or on a 19th century pixiv. It shows a bunch of people reading the 19th century version of 4chan and going "holy cow," and all their friends are gathered around to take a look, even the black dude.

Holy cow! I laughed out loud at this one. I know, that's not what you're supposed to do when you look at art. Sorry, curators. You did your best to suppress any sort of emotional response to the art, but you failed your dark overlord.