"That was the most abysmal heap of drek I've ever seen in a museum in my life, period," my husband said while exiting said museum.
"Well, we never have to go there again," I said trying for appeasement. "We saw the collection now we are finished with this show." We were crossing the street and entering a small urban park. “Let’s sit in the shade for a bit and digest it.”
"I don’t want to digest it. I wish we could have seen some good art, if we had gone where I wanted to go, where I said we should go, we would have seen some really good things. Instead we saw that pile of drek and feel depressed and unsatisfied," he said.
"Next week we’ll visit your museum--we have it to look forward to, that should make you feel better," I said trying to put a good spin on our endeavor to look at modern and contemporary art. "I liked a few things, the Lee Krasner especially," I added. “She has been over-shadowed by Pollock, I think.”
"Maybe we should go to a nice restaurant for lunch to make up for it," he said after sitting under a tree for twenty minutes, having said everything he wanted to say in the first sentence of this story and not giving a damn about Lee Krasner or her "jerk-off" husband Jackson Pollock much less anything about Andy Warhol.
I could see the restaurant idea was brightening his mood after the arduous walk over five floors seeing very little of interest to him, one, possibly two, Klee drawings that were mobbed. Before we began, I assured him we would not be stopping for long in each room as that was the purpose of pop art and action paintings, you were not to spend a great deal of time looking at them, they were painted for speed and that is how we are to take them in. I quoted Andy Warhol's treatise on "fast." He all but ignored my lecture...he's not interested and no matter how many times I make him attend these exhibits, he does not give way on his basic point which is the first sentence of this story.
"I'm sorry it was so tiring, I didn't expect five floors but that there were a couple of things wanted to see as long as the admission was free today," I said.
"We should have gone where I wanted to go. You never listen to me anymore. Let’s have a nice lunch somewhere. Now where should we go? How about that Italian place on Polk? I need something to perk up my spirit after your dismal boyfriend Andy Warhol sunk it to bargain-basement level."
"He's not my boyfriend but I'd share my bedroom with a "Fright Wig" silkscreen," I said. We had whisked ourselves to the restaurant in record time and were seated in the window, the only customers having an early lunch.
"Cheap effects. Concoction. All of it. I think I'd like the mushroom stuffed ravioli with the goat cheese sauce topped with cherry tomato puree. How about you?"
"The Lee Krasner really was evocative," I reiterated for good measure, not quite ready to give it up before dipping a piece of bread into the pesto/olive oil concoction, the same blackish green hue Andy used to great effect in some of his more interesting pieces.
“Have some wine,” he said. “Forget about those punks and poseurs. Next week we'll see some real art.”
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