Post #219274 by Satan's Sin on Mon, Mar 6, 2006 10:18 PM

I buy whatever strikes my fancy, and I have no idea why.

Salesmen have a useful expression: "People buy on emotion, and back up with fact."

Surely art is the same way. You see a picture or read a book or watch a play and you either like it or dislike it and then you start thinking of the reasons why. I don't think you can be "taught" to appreciate art. I think that once you like something (which comes from the depths of our reptilian brain) you can over time become much more familiar with a particular type of art and then take a keener joy in the nuances of that art. But this doesn't come from the same part of the brain that, say, an ancient Greek used to accurately figure out the distance from the earth to the sun by analyzing the length of the noonday's shadow cast by his walking staff. No, I think love of a particular piece of art comes from the same part of the brain that makes you want to rip off a beautiful woman's clothes. Or makes you tell the car salesman you don't care how much it costs, you want that goddamned aqua-colored Thunderbird with the V-8.

For example, I have always liked ballet. It's beautiful and heart-wrenching, and that love comes from the depths of my reptilian brain. But from many, many afternoons watching my daughters take ballet classes I now have a much keener sense of what a right move and a wrong move is, and my appreciation for a great performance has increased by a hundredfold.

For example, I have always liked tiki. But thanks to The Book of Tiki and especially this forum, my sighting of a crumbling old tiki motel in Los Angeles is infinitely more keen and sweet and satisfying.

And so in gratitude for the delicious pictures by Homer and Sergeant may I present to you an American artist (born in 1920 and he doesn't have much more time to go, folks) by the name of George Tooker who I think is very underappreciated and also very very yummy:

Landscape With Figures

Lanterns

Bird Watchers

The Waiting Room

Government Bureau