Some people just might have too much money

YGBSM!  Does this look like a $110.5 million dollars to you?  Somebody paid that much for the painting - by some guy named Jean-Michal Basquait*.  Art, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder.  Look buddy it’s your money, and you can do with it whatever you like, but for crap’s sake -  $110.5 million!!??  I say again, YGBSM!!???

*NOTE:  I assume the artist is a Frenchy guy with an AC/DC name Jean-Michal, Gene Michael as we would say, not a chick Jean-Michelle, but who knows and I’m probably invading someone’s safe space by even wondering.

The piece does remind a bit of what a neurotic Dali painting, with none of Dali’s colorful whimsary*, might look like.  Sure, I know less about art than a lot of the other things I know nothing about, but none-the-less pontificate endlessly on this page with the certitude of teaching Lex jr. that 2+2=4.  If art is in the eye of the beholder, well that implies that all opinions are equal.  So my opinion counts as much as the art critic at the NY Times.  Given the current standards for reporting at the Times, maybe my opinion is worth more. 

*NOTE:   Yeah “whimsary” is a made up word. I’m feeling artistic this morning. It’s called “artistic license.” 

My shock is more with the price paid for the art work than the art work per se, which would look kind of cool in the barn.  No.  That’s not a slam on the piece.  It’s just a factual statement of where Mrs. Lex relegates EVERYTHING I think is cool.  “Hey, can you take the ¼ sawn oak roll top desk that you spent 6 months building with your own hands down to the barn?  It doesn’t go with anything in the house.”  So for Jean-Michal having his masterpiece “relegated to the barn” is high praise from Lex.

This sort of proves one conservative point.  Good art will stand on its own and does not need to be subsidized by widows with 6 kids living month to month on dead hubby’s Social Security, also known as federal subsidies.  It’s sort of like Field of Dreams, you know, “If you build it, they will come.”  If you paint it, and it’s worth a crapola, and it catches the eye of a wealthy patron, they will pay an absurd price for it.  Okay, not exactly like Field of Dreams.  The point is that good art is probably self-sustaining.  PDJT should de-fund the NEA before Maxine Waters impeaches him. 

That was a long way to go to get to the point that the NEA needs to be de-funded, but there you have it.