An Afternoon with Art

Nava has an interesting post about an art exhibit that displayed 3 white canvases and seemed to attract a lot of attention from the phonies. That reminds me of a story from my early twenties. A friend and I had gone to Minneapolis for a weekend of goofing off, theatre hopping and Christmas shopping (incidentally got to see Steve Goodman sing at a bar that weekend). At the time, there was an exhibit of Picasso's work at the main gallery in town, the Walker I think. No way would I miss something like that. Not that I was a Picasso fan, but just the chance to see something so famous was a chance I would not get again. I remember we buzzed on through and then stopped to have lunch at the snooty restaurant with all the buffaloes (dowagers with humps and big fur coats). Ate some overpriced little cracker with a dollop of egg salad and a little cavier (the lowest and the highest extremes in egg prices - and the first and last time I tasted cavier) and noticed that all the people were kind of giving us disapproving glances. Sure we were laughing (affectation always cracks me up) rather than talking in hushed tones and sure we were dressed for comfort, but what the hey, we paid the same amount as they did to get in. Anyway, as we were leaving, I noticed that all those rich fraus expected us to step aside for them - an unwritten code of etiquette about how peasants should treat the lords. When we got to the street, I told my friend, "Watch this." I walked back up the crowded stairs and when I would meet a buffalo, I would take a half step to the right - just enough that they would have to take a half step also in order to pass. Most would not but would wait for me to move farther and I would just wait them out. The looks of hatred I got were priceless.