I'm No Art Critic, But I Know What I Hate

In the past couple of months I've written several unposted screeds about the state of fine arts. Mainly what enrages me is the superciliousness of the art world.

I make no claims to know anything about art. That's partly my point: I know very little and I'd like to know more, but I've found very little defensibly reasoned argument out there. (There's much more assertion than anything else.) And I'm someone who's sympathetic to postmodern social and poststructural literary theory.

Anyhow, I've only been to two gallery exhibitions in my life. The second one was a show of new works by Linn Meyers. I went simply because of a blurb and photo in one of the weekend sections of the local paper, not because I'd heard of her or her work. Basically, it's a lot of ink lines drawn on mylar that create the illusion of texture.

It just happened that the most convenient time for me to go was the day that the show opened. Not knowing how the gallery world works, I didn't imagine that Meyers herself might be there, but she was. I didn't think I'd have anything to ask her, because I'm not artsy; I don't "speak" art. As I looked, there were some technical questions that I developed merely out of curiosity, but no grand questions of meaning or art. So I waited until she was finished speaking with the several people clustered around her, and then let loose:

• How long did she take to draw each line?
  
• How many lines could she draw at a time before her arms got tired?
  
• Did she draw the vertical lines first, or the horizontal?
  
• What kind of pens did she use?
  
• How many pens would she go through for a work?
  
• Did she play with Spirograph when she was small?
  

I expected to get terse, even curt responses. I mean, they're insignificant questions.

In the event, she loved them, going so far as to introduce me to the gallery owner as someone who asks "great questions."

I draw no inferences from this. I don't understand her art any better than I did before asking my questions; I don't like it any better; nor do I understand anything more about Art in general. It was just an unexpectedly delightful turn of events.