Art

Recently when I went to The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, I was astonished by the exhibition of Vermeer, Rembrandt and other Dutch Masters. I thought these artists must have been aliens to have created such brilliant paintings and achieve the appearance of silk, wool, metal, flesh, hair and every other texture with only the use of oil paint. Every room in the exhibition held a generous collection of magnificent masterpieces. Later I visited the Contemporary Art galleries, and rather than being intimidated, I like many naive Americans, thought,"I could do that" on seeing large canvases using primary colors. Just give me the oils and some painter's tape, I reasoned and it would be easy.  But of course many other exhibits were highly imaginative, intricate and brilliant.  Still I decided that the most annoying thing about a great deal of contemporary art is its size. So many of these "creations" demand an greedy amount of space. (I once saw an exhibit with thousands of coat hangers. I always wondered how they would move that particular artwork.) With so many modern pieces taking up entire walls and, in many cases, entire rooms to themselves, one wonders what other works are crowded out to accommodate them.

Note: Not all these exhibits are in Boston. I think I would have remembered the lady in the bed