13 Fevrier: that isn't art, it's a stick figure!

Yes, stick figure art. In Paris. In a national museum. An entire gallery dedicated to this primitive "art." With all the art that they have in this city, with all the beautiful statues, architecture, paintings, and churches, the city has dumbed herself down to calling the work that we saw at the Musee de Mod as "art." We met Oxanna at the modern art museum and went through a few galleries of artwork. It was interesting because it was a completely different scene from the old, classical museums that we had been visiting and there were some particular rooms I enjoyed. I'm not bashing the museum, but the one particular artist that was featured was simply annoying to me. Walking through, I disliked his works and I knew it was because it was too simple and seemingly not creative but after talking with a friend of Oxanna's I realized another reason why it didn't strike me as art. He mentioned that he didn't like it because it wasn't creative, it was simply emotion. That's what I see as well. It's not about style or color or beauty, it was about the artist's expression. Expression isn't a bad word in my vocabulary but it didn't give anything to the viewer- it was only for the artists. Again, that's fine and dandy, but should it really be displayed in a national museum if no one else can extract meaning or emotion except for the artist? In that case, it's art for that artist, he/she can feed from it. However, I don' t feel as though it's meant for everyone if it's that personal. Perhaps others can grasp a level of meaning that I simply was unable to, but it makes me question who does or should benefit from art.