what is art?

Some questions have haunted me for most of my life.

What makes Shakespeare and Beethoven great? (with apologies to Meredith Willson)

What is art?

Or, why are there only eight hot dog buns in a package when wieners come ten to the package? Maybe that accommodates the double stuffers.

Those questions popped to mind earlier this month when I attended the opening of one of our local art galleries. Well, "those questions" other than the buns and wieners controversy. It was not an Andy Warhol exhibit.

Whoever put the exhibit together tried to accommodate the wide range of tastes where art is concerned. The exhibit was restricted to paintings. From the almost-startling representational pieces (that could be second cousin to Richard Estes' Photo-Realism school) to neo-Impressionist landscapes to attempts at surrealistic design.

I attended, not as a potential buyer (my house is well-stocked with Ed Gilliam abstract expressionism), but as a culture vulture. I was there just to enjoy the art.

And I did. Marcel Duchamp, the great cubist, once said: "The spectator completes the art.  The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act."

If that is true (and I think it is), my visit to the gallery was a success. There were two pieces that I returned to for different reasons.

The first is at the top of this essay.

I could bore you with my analysis, but that would defeat the whole process Duchamp described, wouldn't it? You need to see it to draw your own conclusions. I will simply say I admired its craftsmanship, but the artist failed to invoke empathy in the viewer as Kahlo would have done.

On the other hand, there is nothing in surrealism art that demands empathy. Some would argue the heart of surrealism is to avoid that type of emotion. When asked about what was behind his paintings, the doyen of surrealists, René Magritte, replied: "the wall."

But, for connection, this piece was my favorite.

OK. It is cartoonish, and looks as if it could have been  scrawled on a neighbor's wall. But it worked for me because it made me laugh. Repeatedly, Out loud. To the horror of some of my fellow viewers.

Almost every tour I have taken to archaeological sites in Mexico has a self-important guide who earnestly prods his charges to see symbols that northern eyes have trouble discerning.

The face of Tlaloc is one of my favorites -- in the frieze of the Quetzalcóal temple at Teotihuacán.

You can see the family resemblance to the painting in the gallery.But that is not what makes it so amusing.

A lot of us tourists look at the depictions of the Mesoamerican gods and think they look like something from space. (And I suppose that was the original idea of the myths.) It is no wonder that a surprising number of people still believe that space aliens built the monumental architecture of the ancient world.

The painting simply plays host to that quirk in human nature. And, as a result, it connects with the viewer.

What better compliment is there to an artist than to elicit one of the better human responses -- laughter?

Of course, art is far more than that. And the respective artists must have realized that in pricing their pieces.

I could have taken the Mesoamerican alien home for $450 (US). The woman in blue and orange would have set me back $7,500 (US). (The fact that the paintings are priced in US dollars says a lot about winters in our village by the sea.)

My visit took me a little bit further down the path of what is art and what makes an artist great.

But the wieners in the buns question is going to have to wait for another day.