The Dilettantes, photo-happy art admirers, encounter a painting from the Mark Rothko Black-Form series. They are confused by it.
HARRISON
What the hell is that?
WILLIS
Maybe it’s a logo for some art.
HARRISON
I think this is the art.
WILLIS
No.
HARRISON
Yes.
WILLIS
No.
HARRISON
Yes.
WILLIS
It’s a square.
HARRISON
Squares are also rectangles.
WILLIS
It’s a rectangular square.
HARRISON
And this is art?
WILLIS
Is this art?
HARRISON
This is art.
WILLIS
How do you know?
HARRISON
It’s here, isn’t it?
WILLIS
It must be famous.
HARRISON
The most famous rectangular square in the world, perhaps.
WILLIS
Famous or not, it’s ugly.
HARRISON
It’s nothing.
WILLIS
An ugly bunch of nothingness.
HARRISON
How can it be ugly when it’s nothing?
WILLIS
Nothingness is always ugly.
HARRISON
Except when it’s not.
WILLIS
Isn’t that the truth.
HARRISON
I’ll bet that if I looked at it, I wouldn’t even see boobs hidden in it.
WILLIS
That doesn’t sound like art at all.
HARRISON
That’s how we know this isn’t art.
Black-Form series is perhaps some of Mark’s best work.
I am 64 and about to retire. Working with clay I am about to make “art” again. People have commented about my bulbous and elongated closed forms as human anatomical parts. I guess that could makes it art.
My only problem is my wife thinks I need to change my expressive creative direction. I say it should, and will, evolve as it develops. I suspect she might say the same thing about artists like Mark Rothko.
I believe it is the signature expressive creation that defines an individual.