Screaming Thoughts

Today, this pastel sold for US$119.9 million today, which is higher than the entire GDP of the Falkland Islands and Niue combined. The work is one of 4 pieces created in 1895 by Edvard Munch, but the first one to land in private hands. And it certainly speaks to me.

If I was a rich bastard with a big Koch-sized bank account, I would be all over this. I would buy this and travel all over the world with it. I'd even (gasp!) let children near it and maybe even let folks take pictures. And when I'd be all old and dry, I'd donate it to the Art Gallery of Ontario, the magical place where I got to see King Tut's sarcophagus when I was very small.
**Sidebar: After viewing the exhibit, I would draw plans for ancient city layouts and imagine myself as the monarch and whatnot. I'm sure that most 5-year-old kids would be freaked out by seeing a dude's coffin, but it was the beginning of yet another new obsession for me.***

 Regardless of whether it is a burial shroud or a poem about a beloved pet, art stirs the psyche in ways that too few children nowadays are permitted to experience. Today is so literal and finite; it's about numbers and goals and achievements and having parents live vicariously through their offspring.

But kids need to express themselves and to see another's masterpiece is to potentially think and feel a message, be it the artist's or the interpretation. That 3 minutes staring at a man or society's greatest accomplishment is a moment of freedom from all of the daily mental noise that too few of us are permitted to enjoy and I think kids should be able to have a piece of that serenity.

In the absence of the billions I would like to spend bringing children the joy of viewing art, I wish for all of you to take a bit of art time with your own kids. Take the kid to a play, or a museum or gallery for sure, but also don't value the ability to throw a football over that which fosters the imagination required to create new plays. Permit your little human to enjoy their own thoughts, goofing off, dressing up, painting, and whatever moves them without criticizing them for it. Let kids be kids; for them, everything is art, whether they're drawing a statistical grid (okay, that was me) or painting the Arc de Triomphe. Fantasy is reality in the growing mind. Actually, adults could use a little as well.

Also, I painted this. See, art is for everyone, even this old math geek.