When Cute Is the Kiss of Death

 Art, Gardening  No Responses »
May 072012
 

Art is never supposed to be cute. If you called the Mona Lisa cute, I bet she’d slap that grin right off your face. Art should fill you with serenity or rage, with beauty or horror. But never the warm, cuddly cuteness of babies and kittens.

Cuteness in art is the kiss of death.

Every year I attend the “Art in Bloom” exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. This is a must because, by April, I am coming off two gray months and four white months of Minnesota winter, and my eyeballs are jonesing for color and flowers. Art in Bloom provides both. It also sometimes serves up a sickening dose of cuteness.

The idea of Art in Bloom is for an artist to select a piece of artwork and then interpret it in flowers. It is open to both professionals and amateurs so I try not to be too critical. My problem is when the floral artist gets too representational—or cute. And some years all cute minds think alike. This year it was shoes. At least three interpretations included shoes in them: a painting of a bronco rider (the artist used a cowboy boot vase), a painting of a Dutch girl (yes, there was a wooden shoe tucked into the greenery), and a sculpture crafted of nothing but footwear.

My daughter thought I should give that last arrangement, which was constructed of white carnations and a pair of black sequined heels, a free pass since the sculpture itself (Willie Cole’s Ann Klein with a Baby in Transit) was made entirely of real shoes. Something to consider, but remember, this is coming from a gal who never saw a pair red stilettos she didn’t like.

This year nearly 160 floral artists participated and some 26,000 color-starved, garden-loving Minnesotans visited. The four-day festival is wildly popular. This is good. Filling a museum any day is good. And I wouldn’t miss Art in Bloom for all the world, even if next year someone sticks a miniature John Deere (or, heaven forbid, a work boot) in the middle of floral interpretation of a farm scene.

Here are some of my favorite Art in Bloom displays from years past:

Santos Dumont's The Father of Aviation II

 

Vincent van Gogh's Olive Trees

 

Egon Schiele's Portrait of Paris von Gutersloh

  

 

A Flood of Pansies Perhaps

 Gardening  No Responses »
Apr 072011
 

I jumped the gun, and the pansies of the world are probably freaking out in their collective consciousness. I planted pansies and violas on April 6 in frost-prone Minnesota because I just couldn’t wait. I also have buckets of relatives descending on me in May and wanted my yard to look pretty. Still it was a harsh thing to do.

It was only supposed to get down to 38 last night, a temperature the woman at the nursery assured me the pansies could take. (Of course, I was the only one roaming the aisles at the nursery in April, and I must have looked like a sucker as I approached the cash register.) So when I got up this morning and saw the thermometer at 32, hovering at that magical kiss-of-death mark, I hurried to the window. The pansies did not look happy.

I hope their melancholia will improve during the day as the sun does its thing.

I admit I am seeking some control over nature because right now she is kicking my butt. The Mississippi River has already flooded my daughter’s wedding venue once and will likely do it again in the next week. A month before the wedding, we are scrambling to formulate Plan B. It is both good and bad that my daughter is an organizer. She gets stressed when things do not go as planned, but, on the other hand, she can “list” her way out of almost any catastrophe.

My father tells stories of growing up on an island in the Mississippi between Missouri and Illinois. Every few years the river rose and turned the living room into a swimming pool of dirty water and desperate creatures (snakes!). When the water went down, they tossed out the critters and commenced cleaning. We don’t have it that bad, but then my father never had to figure out what to do with 160 guests.

So I am rooting for the pansies and a dry April and my daughter’s list-making abilities.