Picasso, Shakespeare and the cultural elites

I recently spent a whole day with cultural elites, who think Picasso and Shakespeare are marvellous, inspired geniuses and their work is remarkable and breathtaking, and I learnt that cubism doesn't necessarily refer to the cryptic puzzle amazingness of Mr Rubik.  Picasso and Shakespeare are actually two artists largely responsible for the first widespread use of the term "WTF?" 

My first cultural appointment of the day was hanging at the Picasso exhibition in the NSW Art Gallery with the Pablo connoisseurs.  I don't really care for art, and I especially don't care for the kind of art that the pretentious cultural elites are referring to when they pompously spit out comments like, "you have to have an eye for Picasso".  Well fucking excuse me then.

A notable example from
Picasso's 'WTF' Collection

My mistake; I thought I was looking at the artwork of a psychologically damaged man who thinks strategically placed shapes on a canvas will entertain the elitists.  Oh, wait, it does.  I must admit that I appreciate his early work, when he was into the classics; before he got bored and depressed and started experimenting with cubes and odd shapes and chopped up guitars and human body parts. 

He seemed to have quite the eye for limbs separated from the human torso - a skill trauma surgeons and serial killers must have appreciated over the years.  I also observed a life-long obsession with goats - goats on the beach, a sculpture of a goat with a large appendage (perfect for the patio if you have the cash) and a naked man carrying a goat, to name but a few.  Yes it is weird, but it is art, so pipe down.

Apparently the deconstructed guitar is supposed to represent a journey through time, but I think it looks horribly ugly.  And I think a great deal of his later work is mediocre and also horribly ugly.  But listening to the loud know-it-alls on my tour through the his life's work, I heard a story of a man on an incredible journey, with many ups and downs, and I became far more intrigued with why his style changed at particular points in his life than the actual work itself.

And it occurred to me that this is surely why his work confuses the hell out of me; it is a representation of what must have been going on in his head.  Which makes the art critics who deconstruct the meaning of his work all the more absurd.

So, yeah, you do have to have an eye for Picasso; most telling, his canvases reveal that his many lovers apparently had three or more breasts, and noses where their eyes should be.  I'm glad my head isn't so screwed up that I can understand this excursion into his subconsciouness. 

My next cultural appointment of the day was attending the Bell Shakespeare's contemporary interpretation of Julius Caesar at the Sydney Opera House's Playhouse.  It's kind of funny that Shakespeare is considered to be the finest dramatist of all time, because anyone who has been forced to read or listen to any of his work will tell you that they can't understand a thing anybody is saying.

Bell Shakespeare produced an interpretation with much yelling and pontificating and chalk dust throwing (interpretative blood) and overblown theatrics and a girl in high heels played Cassius, like Shakespeare isn't confusing enough already.  But I very much liked it.  Art thou was not bored or confused that much at all.