Garbage is in the eye of the beholder ...

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Garbage is in the eye of the beholder ...

From

Published on before 2005

I was reminded of a true story from a friend who now has been a successful, professional, representational painter for some years. When he was a student in "a famous art school" in the seventies he was required to pass his oil painting class, he had to do a purely abstract painting. He had put it off until the last minute having done all the other requirements. So he went down to the hardware store and bought a piece of plywood, a can of spackling, 2 cans of spray flat black and a tube of wax gold leaf. He spackled the plywood randomly, then sprayed the dry spackling with the black then rubbed a touch of the wax gilt over the high points.

When he turned in his masterwork, it caused quite a stir. The art professors were all a stir and they talked seriously about adding it to the school's permanant art museum collection. Finally they determined it was perhaps too "dark". So my friend took it back to his garage, shut the door and chopped it to pieces with an axe. From the museum to kindling by a hair.