I have written about art before, I don’t know when but I remember telling that what I like about art is the building it is hanging. I like walking in these large, empty and silent rooms where I can look around without disturbing anyone. That there is art is off course a plus and I might even look a little longer if it is pleasing to the eyes or my soul.

I like to take pictures in art museums and one of my favorite things I take pictures of are the signs you see and the fire extinguishers, I frame them in such a way that when you see the picture you doubt if it is part of the exhibition or just a utility.

It is indeed difficult for me sometimes, when I see certain objects on the floor or hanging on the wall, a little card next to it with a name and a date, this is difficult because the point of it is lost for me. I once saw a stack of old newspapers on the floor, in a pristine museum where every piece of paper waste is picked up by the staff. It had a tittle and probably a meaning or two that I don’t know.

According to Wikipedia art is: “a diverse range or product of human activity involving creative imagination to express technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.”

Who am I to disagree with Wikipedia, where you can find some sort of democratic consensus and answer on all kind of questions. But it is really broad and the newspaper thingy is probably an example of “a conceptual idea”

This is in a museum in Holland. I like the pictures on the left a lot, they were detailed and a lot of technic is used and they froze some kind of expression really good in time. I like art where I can see the skill and patience in but the have to feel you also. The paintings on the right are more abstract and I like those to if they can give you that same emotion, sometimes that works with me but normally I react better to more realistic art. The two “sculptures” you see where really interesting , specially the figure in the bed.

This is another sculpture where I can admire the craftsmanship and I can imagine some stories with it but for the rest it leaves me cold like the material it is made of. Maybe that is the message of the artist, now I think of it. If art just grips me without me having to explain it then I like it and for me that is what art supposed to do, transferring an emotion, even if it is not the one intended by the artist. I used the word transferring and rereading it I wonder if it is the right word and I think it is. If I look at that self-portrait above, I get an emotion “transferred” from the picture to me. I think it is also possible that you can look at another self-portrait and feel an emotion welling up in yourself out of recognition, the painting “released” that feeling in you.

This is a picture I took in a museum in Oslo years ago. I am probably not the first one to do this and the artist is also not the first one to do this, I guess. For me the story falls flat and I just like to talk to the artist end hear what they have to say. The only thing I like is the big print and the time it took to make end produce the picture, it took me probably a few minutes before some people stopped at the right place. 

This is the kind of art that I don’t care for so much. But this is just taste and I cannot say anything negative about it. I don’t remember who made it or how it is made but this looks like paint on a big canvas, it is the kind of art where you could say that “I can make this to” and I know that is not fair to the artis, but the first picture I showed, the self-portrait, I know I cannot make that. But this is off course a slippery slope, imagine you master most of the technics available if it comes to painting, nothing will be art for you anymore because you can say that you can make it to. It is a bad argument but also hard to ignore and simple art can be brilliant but for me it almost always falls flat. 

This is another type of painting that I just look at in passing. I recognize a lot of symbols and it tries to say a lot but, in my opinion, (visual)art is not a good medium to tell a story and a way to try to convey some kind of idea. Writing down your ideas is already hard enough, specially if you want to reach an audience, doing it with cryptic symbols doesn’t make it easier. If I see people looking at these kinds of paintings, talking and gesturing, I always wonder what they talk about; is that the point of this kind of art, to make people talk? What I want is to talk to one of these artists, and let him or her explain to me what it al means.  

This the kind of “art” that I really like, it is the intricate construction and a lot to look at. It probably also has some kind of message but this time I will forgive the artist this and just enjoy looking at it and admire the ingenuity.

I realize that I have almost no names from the artist above, I know that is not nice but what can you do. I cannot name many artists and I don’t read art books but when I visit a new town and there is time over after I visited the local history museum I will go to an art museum, preferably modern art. I visited many museums over the years and I always enjoy my time in these places.

There is one artist that always stuck with me and that is Niki de Saint Phalle. I think the first time I saw some of her art was in Nice, France. I like the big and colourful sculptures she makes and her more experimental work from her early years. I like the colourful sculptures because to me they are unpretentious and also “there”. I just like seeing her sculptures everywhere, when you meet them, you can almost not stop and look mindlessly but there is a deeper story behind her work but she showed that mostly by the way she lived. I imagine them standing in a war zone and no one knows what to do. Just look for yourself and let me know what you like.