I have begun Don Quixote: but first:

From Michael Blowhard's Blog:

It's OK not to get some great art. This is art, after all, not science or history, and doin' the art thing is as much about exploring your own responses as it is about exploring the world.

I had a few subpoints in mind too: 1) You don't have to love everything you're told is great, 2) You don't have to claim greatness for everything you love, and 3) You don't have to dispute the greatness of the works and artists you dislike. Explore a lot of great art, give yourself the experience of it, have whatever response you have to it -- and then let it all go. What does it matter, really, whether you agree with the so-called experts? (I can get vexed when I see people try-try-trying, oh so very hard, to "appreciate" a work in exactly the way they've been told to. Why do they strain with such determination to have a particular great experience? Why not have the experience they're having instead, whatever it is?) It matters only that you give the work a try and take note of what the experience was like for you. But don't be such a self-pleasing fool that you avoid what's been deemed to be great. That's crazy too. Hey, it's cool and fun to challenge yourself.

Anyway, the rules of this game:



You aren't disputing the greatness of the artist or the artwork.

You can see the point of the work or the artist, and you understand what's there to be gotten.

You understand the greatness of it too -- the range of its influence, what other artists have taken from it, etc. It's impressive, and you're impressed.

And you've given the work or the artist a decent and earnest try.

But you've found that when you look at it, or you listen to it, or you read it -- the magic evaporates.

To kick things off, here's a modest Michael Blowhard "It ain't happenin' for me" list: Henry James. Dostoevsky. "Citizen Kane." Bob Dylan. "The Waste Land." Euripides. Mahler. Miles Davis.

Perfectly content that all these artists and artworks are deemed great. I got no problem with that at all. They just don't -- alas -- do a thing for me.

(Between you and me, I'm excluding much 20th century art and architecture because I'm betting that the 20th century's "greatness" list is going to be revised in the fairly near future. I'd bet, for example, that in 25 years Faulkner and Joyce -- both of whom I generally like -- will be largely forgotten. And don't get me started about "great" modernist architecture.)

What indisputably great art do you blank out on? Eager to hear from visitors too, of course.

Best,

Michael