To the Editor,

For millennia, “art” was recognizable as art.

Realistic portraits, landscapes, still-lifes. Beautiful, lifelike sculptures. Amazing, God-given talent. Ability.

Recently, a banana duct-taped to a wall was laughably accepted as “art,” auctioned, and sold for $6.2 million.

The idiot who bought it ate it.

Modern art, it’s now being declared, “has become too abstract for its own good.” No kidding.

In the modern era, art is a joke; a con game. “Art” is literally anything the “artist” says it is. What nowadays passes for “art” was long ago declared subjective to the viewer. Therefore, no objective talent or effort is required of the artist. Do whatever. Someone asks what it’s supposed to be? Make something up.

I have no such artistic ability whatsoever, but even I could take an old card table, hot glue a spoon into a bowl, and hot glue them to the table. Throw in an unused napkin.

It’s a bold, unvarnished commentary on hunger.

Behold! Art!

That’ll be $25 million.

Remember the great popularity of the works of Thomas Kinkade? A friend who was taking art classes when he was popular hated him, essentially because her instructors did. She once, rather smugly, really, lectured us that Kinkade’s, work wasn’t “art.”

I replied, “why, because it’s recognizable?” Nowadays, you’re not an “artist,” unless you make pointless, meaningless things nobody really recognizes or understands.

Need proof?

View the celebrated “art” of Jackson Pollock.

“Artists” hated Kinkade’s work because one, he had the audacity to apply rational visual references, and two, simple jealousy. He was wildly popular in his lifetime and died a very wealthy man.

In 2016, a humorous story ran in the BBC magazine. Two young men, unimpressed by the “art” they saw, purposely left a pair of glasses as “bait” on the floor of a San Francisco art gallery. A group of credulous art enthusiasts quickly gathered, taking pictures, discussing the meaning of the piece. The uncritical crowd watching, the man, laughing, retrieved his glasses.

Freakin’ hilarious.

Strictly speaking, “modern art” doesn’t need “meaning.” Again, it’s all subjective. Which is why the “art world” is a common avenue of money laundering.

Need to transfer a large sum of illicit funds? Have somebody provide a piece of “art” and sell it to you for just that amount. Who really believes anybody honestly paid $750K for Hunter Biden’s smeared canvases of vaguely recognizable floral still-lifes?

There’s a movie in which Jeff Goldblum plays a snooty, cynical, pretentious artist who grudgingly admits his work doesn’t really sell. He condescendingly points out, however, that Van Gogh’s works didn’t get noticed until after he’d died. Someone then asks him how long he’d have to be dead, before he can afford to pay his rent.

Have a preschooler draw you a picture with a few colorful squiggles. Frame it; call it a “commentary on” something controversial. Sell it for a million dollars. Snooty, cynical, pretentious suckers trying to look smart will buy it right up.

See the banana anecdote, above.

Rob Denham

Weirton