You're in distress. You just walked into an art museum, paid a large sum of money for the ticket, and now you find that nothing about it interests you. What's worse, your significant other cannot believe she was dragged here on a perfectly good Saturday, and she is waiting for you to say something about the painting before you. You look at the label. Pablo Picasso.
"Look, honey, it's a Picasso," you say.
She challenges you with her eyes. What about it? Do you know the first thing about Picasso? Tell me, is there something about you I don't know?
Thousands of Bostonians, Washingtonians, New Yorkers, and tourists to France and Italy face this dilemma every year. It usually results in avoidance of the museum districts. Or, if you do go back to the Smithsonian, it's straight to Air and Space - you "don't want to get into a big discussion about art today."
This is a job for Art Guy in Jeans.
"Demoiselles d'Avignon," says a young stranger to the left, "is seen largely as the painting that defines Primitivism. Picasso applied his studies of African art to the faces of the ladies at right."
You get a sudden rush of self-confidence.
"I would hardly call African art primitive; maybe they were after a different style."
"It's just the title of the genre, sweetie," says your day date.
"Yeah, well maybe our Western stereotypes have narrowed our understanding of world art. What do you think of that?" you say, turning to your left.
But the stranger has vanished.
And on and on you discuss Picasso and African art with your date, but there's one thing you can't get out of your head. Where did that art guy in jeans go?
He went to tactlessly dump all his art opinions, planned tours, and sarcastic insights on a new blog. Art Guy in Jeans reads tall piles of art history books with a single Red Bull, sees right through the agendas of art curators with powerful X ray vision, and can derail a locomotive with his dry wit. Art Guy in Jeans can cut through 3 hour lines with a razor sharp museum pass.
Art Guy in Jeans never has to wait in lines, all he has to do is give our generation of art viewers a critical voice.
