My second career: Art Critic

Dear Bro,

Back in 1985 I was laid off from AirSpur Helicopter after a staffing cutback. I had previously been laid off from General Electric in 1984 due to the downturn in the local California economy and my severe lack of seniority on the job. I attended Chaffey College, or UCLH as we commonly referred to it (University of Cucamonga, Left on Haven Ave) in early 1985 to try to find my next career path, other then being laid off by aviation related employers for the rest of my life. Thus I took the following courses: Philosophy, Drafting, Basic Accounting, Art History, and Biology.

My favorite was Art History, as David Cohen and I took the course together and proceeded to visit every art museum in Southern California armed with both our new found knowledge of art and six packs of Tecate. Ahhh... good times...

but I digress.... from this course I developed a lifelong interest in Art and Art History. As a matter of fact I fancy myself quite the art critic. Here... let me show you...

This is a painting done by some Italian dude named Botticelli. I think he was an extra in background scenes of the Sopranos. Between takes I guess he would sit around and paint stuff. Not a bad first effort, but he has a vivid imagination to think chics would hang out naked on clam shells while weird looking floating dudes blow flowers at her and some other girl steals her clothes. Botticelli needs to lay off the sauce ... if you know what I mean.

Now this is by some Spanish guy who was supposedly one of the greatest artists of all time. I think he cut a few corners on this one as the title of it is "Woman with Book" and I count no more than five pages in said book. Let's say for argument that her hand is hiding 5 more pages, then a better title would be "Woman with Pamphlet", or even "Women with Short Story". But "Woman with Book", well Pablo.... I think that is a bit of a stretch... don't you?







This is art??? I heard somewhere that this guy's work, all like this one, sells for millions of dollars at auction. This is three swabs of different colored paints slapped onto an inexpensive piece of canvas. Wow.... I guess if I drew three lines on large canvases, immigrate from Latvia, and killed myself at age 66 I could have doodlings like this sell at auction to really snooty people for $22 million.








Okay... I give up. Let me get this straight... If I smoke cigarettes like a chimney, get into fights in New York bars, chase skirt like Burt Reynolds in his heyday, and then in my spare time randomly drip some paint on a canvas then one day someone will buy that canvas for $140 MILLION!!!! Am I missing something here!!! It is paint randomly dripped on a piece of canvas by the local mean barfly....












I think I understand why I became an accountant.......