How can you seem intelligent? Appearing intelligent is terribly important and definitely better than merely being intelligent, which is no fun at all and a leading cause of alcoholism. If you seem smart, people at parties will talk to you about big, important things instead of asking you which way the bathroom is. Presumably that is why you are attending college.
One of the best ways to appear smart is to wear a yarmulke. Nobody has ever seen a really stupid person wearing a yarmulke. Don't worry about having to explain your reason for wearing one; even Jews have no idea what yarmulkes are actually for. Whatever the religious significance, the fact is that wearing a small hat makes your brain look enormous by comparison. Do not attempt to substitute a fez, as this will make you look like an unusually clever circus monkey.
You also need something smart to talk about. Subjects like science, math and history are a bad idea because in order to understand them you will have to spend a lot of time reading books when you could be out looking smart. Art is a much better topic because you can bluff your way out of any conversation too deep for you.
Of course, you can't talk about popular art. Any idiot can have opinions about things that are popular — I do it all the time. A person as smart as you are pretending to be needs to have exceptionally cultured taste … and the place to get it is the Chazen art museum.
Hey, it's not going to be that boring. Think about it: art museums are the original media pirates! When The British Museum opened free to the public in 1759, can you imagine how pissed off William Blake was that any bonehead could look at his intellectual property, such as "Satan Inflicting Boils on Job," without paying him royalties? Everybody knows that William Blake's controversial stance against peer-to-peer-of-the-realm folio-sharing made him the Lars Ulrich of the 18th century, only with talent.
Thus emboldened by the rebellious spirit of art museums, enter from any door and make your way to the center of Paige Court, where you may view Peter Gourfain's "Roundabout" until June when some poor sucker will have to figure out how to get the thing out. "Roundabout" is a nine-foot tall sculpture of wood and clay shaped like a nine-ribbed chandelier and decorated with 98 carved and sculpted reliefs along its supports.
Most of the reliefs feature the timeless theme of things coming out of people's mouths that should not have been put there in the first place. I counted at least 14 different objects being vomited, including guns, hinges, human heads and bees. It turns out this is just because "Roundabout" is "a fully successful hybrid between the abstract and the figurative" according to art critic Lucy Lippard, so it's not as gross as it seems.
Yet that doesn't explain why in one corner of the vast oaken behemoth there is a man using a fiddle bow to 'play' a crab — but it's not a fiddler crab! It's a horseshoe crab! How are you going to get a good tune out of a crab like that, Gourfain? I couldn't figure out what was going on in the rest of the chandelier what with all the puking, but the musical crab definitely triggered a deep response. It gave me a sense of "social optimism and pessimism, art of the past and present," and also I wanted to eat some bees.
But no time for that now! Take a few steps over to the Mayer Gallery, currently displaying "Disasters of War" by the Chapman Brothers; or as I call it, Nose-Penis-Swastika Spectacular! The Chapman Brothers, a pair of British artists with a reputation for challenging the mores of art patrons with images of decontextualized sex and violence, describe their work as commentaries on the futility of artistic statements against war. This is accomplished via a series of deliberately childish sketches featuring teddy bears bisecting each other with sabers, swastika-shaped Ferris wheels, and an incredible array of children with penises instead of noses.
Each of the etchings is a parodical commentary on specific anti-war prints by the great Francisco de Goya released after his death. The exhibit was Jake and Dinos Chapman's entry in the Jet-Setting Celebrity Artist Ridiculous-Off 2003, a competition in which participants struggle to produce the most ridiculous thing imaginable and still get paid to do it.
Yes, the Chapman's plan and execution was flawless: drunkenly scrawl deliberately plagiarized doodles, frame them, classify them as triple-reverse-post-ironic historical commentaries and make mad crazy cash by selling them to art collectors and museums who believe that having their intelligence insulted at tremendous expense is part of the creative process. Then use the cash and fame as leverage to date Kylie Minogue. Yes, art may be futile against war, but it's great for getting laid by famous people!
But those are just the temporary exhibits! To learn more about the art throughout the museum you may wish to take a docent-led tour, but that is for lazy and uncreative people. What you want is the little pamphlet near the security desk titled "Museum Maze: A Gallery Guide For Kids and Families." Docents can be incredibly self-centered, they just talk and talk and talk and never stop to ask what you think. "Museum Maze" dares to defy convention and asks you to contribute by imagining a variation on the theme of ancient Greek vase patterns and drawing it onto the blank provided.
If you created an interlocking series of androgynous children ejecting randomly selected objects from their mouths, congratulations! You are an edgy, confrontational artist with a unique social perspective and should demand large sacks of money from rich people with no taste.
Ben Freund has no taste, but then again, he doesn't have any sacks of money either. All he has is your love, which you can communicate to him at [email protected].
