"Modern art" is stupid.

So, art.

I took exactly one art class while at school, and that was only because it was mandatory.  It was a long time ago, so I don't remember a lot of the exact details, but one thing in particular stood out to me.  I hate looking at art as some kind of competition.  When we were given a specific thing to create, I couldn't help but compare my finished product to the others, and art is one of the very few things where I almost completely lack any sort of self-confidence.  There was always something better about other people's works than mine.  That still exists, to this day... but we might visit that a bit later in the post.

The only project that I remember from that art class is one where we were studying Egyptian death masks.  The subject itself was interesting to me, and the project was to create our own masks out of clay.  There was no "right" or "wrong" way to make a mask (beyond the obvious, anyway).  I really enjoyed that assignment, because I didn't have to worry about... well, anything, other than how I wanted it to look.  The end result was multi-colored (where most other masks were monochromatic), and I even used a bit of extra clay to make tear-like-things below the eyes. Why?  I don't know, I wanted to at the time, and it didn't matter.  I got an A on the assignment.

Art, to me, is pretty simple.  Art is entertainment.  Art is an expression of emotions.  The saying "A picture is worth a thousand words" is so, so true, as long as the person who made the picture put their heart into it.  I know several people who can draw things several million times better than I could ever hope to.  Despite this, when I put a real amount of time into drawing something (which is usually, at most, once a week, for the weekly schedule decoration), I take a fairly large amount of pride in it.  Yes, other people could do it better, and yes, it's not great, but I like what I did.  Will my work(s) ever be displayed in a museum?  Hell no.  Are they still something that I consider "art"?  Absolutely.

I used to do a lot of animated stick figure stuff.  I still have a fair number of them saved in various places online.  Stick figures are absolutely not what anyone would instinctively think of as "art"... but again, I put a lot of time and effort into each of those, and I'm proud of them.  Does art have to be fancy, with advanced techniques and massive amounts of detail, to be acceptable?  I don't think so.  I actually prefer simple art.  Sometimes things don't need to be perfect to be pleasing.

This was kind of a random post, but I hope that I've gotten at least a few of my thoughts across.  In my opinion, art is very simply a means of expressing creativity and emotion that both the creator and others can find enjoyable.  It's nice when art makes sense, but it isn't always necessarily a requirement.  ... Except for modern art.  Modern art is stupid.