What is Art? Walk the Louvre and keep a list of all the different kinds you see. I mean the different kinds of reasons you see inside the people who made each bit. Pretty quick if you're listening you can see some things pretty clear. ## 1 Some art's a cry of pain a compulsive love and inability to _not_ create the damn thing. They're the ones who die young. Not much of that in museums, save the van Goghs. ![[vincent-van-gogh-portrait-of-dr-gachet-the-triangle-wide.jpg]] ## 2 Other art's a day job. Naked angel babies feature prominently here, as do all those busts of the triumphish enwigged Great Men©®™ who just so happen to have commissioned the damn thing. Here you see the soul of the creator skilled and bored, engaging in a sort of blue collar fine art then and now viewed in quiet dimlit rooms where viewers walk at the speed of grocery store browsing, equally bored, past works of skill that don't shout much into the future that one can hear in the quiet rooms, b/c this sort of art doesn't contain all that much love or pain, and it probably can't, for like, idk, structural reasons. ![[busts-louvre.jpg]] ## 3 There's a kind of art too that's just practical. Old pottery, ceramic bowls, everyday stuff. And sure there's art _on_ the stuff, And sure it counts as art, Same as Pottery Barn, but y'know, way old. And at least that's pretty cool I guess. ![[ancient-mesopotamian-artifacts-the-louvre-paris.jpg]] ## 4 Then there's this. ![[marble-sculpture-03.jpg]] Look closely and ask what part of the human soul makes a person do this. ![[marble-sculpture-02.jpg]] They're obsessed with veils, hair and rope, the creators of this genre. ![[marble-sculpture-04.jpg]] These are the developers. The autists and nerds. The highly technical. There's a passion here that somehow shares nothing with van Gogh and that best-ever-in-all-of-art triangle slapped on in the background after he painted the front. These are our people, and I can tell you a some truths about them just as confidently as I could if they right were here with me now: They didn't really care about ropes and veils and hair. They're showing off. They're stunt hacking. What can I get away with. I'm gonna make this god damn rock look like the softest satin on god's green earth, though the Earth (they'd correct us) isn't primarily green but rather blue to 1st order as the oceans are a majority and then to 2nd or\\ der its brown & only green in the higher or\\ der terms above that. They're the autists. They're the nerds. And they're right. The earth is blue. At least to first order. That's why they could draw this ![[cave-paintings-05.jpg]] 32,000 years ago. And this. ![[cave-paintings-04.jpg]] Why can't you?