I'm going to start signing my name to tiles!

So though it has been a while since I have posted anything, I have meant to put things from my notes and sketchbook in here. It just hasn't happened, as of yet. Soon, I promise.

But in the meantime, I have to share a story with you.

Dinner tonight, with my family. We're sitting around the table letting one of my sisters entertain us, as she usually does. Granted, as the clown of the family, she's usually pretty bright. She'll be a junior in the fall, and is close to top of her class. She lives up to her blond hair only inasmuch to get a laugh from us now and then. So I reeled when she threw up her hands and said, "OH MY GOSH GUYS. Derek was telling me today that there is some guy that totally signed his name on a urinal in some bathroom somewhere, and they tore it out, put it in a museum, and called it art. I am SO TOTALLY going to start signing my name on bathroom tiles. Maybe I'll be famous!!"

..... No, I kid you not. That is as close to actual quoting as I'm going to get. At some point after that, she looked at me and was like, "Oh do you know who I'm talking about? You know about that guy?" And I groaned as I covered my face with my hands.

The conversation was soon lost after that, mostly because my family has little interest in discussing art, much less the artists... and it was probably an entirely futile subject between bites of chicken and pasta at my family's dinner table.


What I don't understand, though, is why my sister isn't alone in not knowing some basic art history. Because in a visual world, it is art, media, and pop culture that define the metaphors and comparisons that we use constantly. And in knowing about art history, we understand the rest of history in a more concise way-- what people thought about society, how they viewed the government, what they thought about politics and global leaders, how the economy was doing, what social and pop culture items had significance then... the list goes on and on. We ought to be teaching these things, and high school kids should know about the milestones in art because it is a part of culture. And with so much visual ILliteracy, it would greatly benefit all of us to have a better understanding of the images and icons of our past and present.