One of the sites I read regularly is the Dilbert Blog, by Dilbert creator Scott Adams. Today he posted an interesting piece on judging art… interesting because I’ve never understood the appeal of certain kinds of art. But even after reading it, I have to say that I still don’t understand most of what passes as “modern art” (code for “we have no frickin’ clue what it’s supposed to be”).

I had an acquaintance at a former job, who I’ll call AA, who only worked there to finance his art. I saw his work once… it consisted of dozens of (to me) identical sculptures of what appeared to be a twisted tube, done in different kinds of stone. When I wondered aloud at it’s purpose, he told me that it was impressive because it was so difficult to do. My head understands that, but I still don’t get the purpose behind them… one, two, maybe even six, I could understand, but dozens?

He held the opinion that people should flock to him and give him many thousands of dollars (on the order of six months’ worth of paychecks for him at the time — gross, not net) for the privilege of owning one of these twisted rock tubes. He also held the contradictory and possibly inevitable opinion that rich people were all crooks, and the government should take all of their money away and give it to artists like himself, so that he could spend all day making his art instead of working for a living. Needless to say, working with him was very amusing.