Thanks to the new constitutional amendment, we have a bucket of money to spend on water, the environment, and the arts. The first two items are easy -- that stuff's everywhere. But art? If we're going to spend millions on it, shouldn't we first decide what it is? Since that question has never been posed before, let's take a swing at it. Art is:
1. A community theater production of "Take a Swing At It," an uproarious dinner-theater musical about a band of widows who form their own minor league baseball team. Features a spunky little grandma who cusses, a prim and easily shocked church-lady type, a sultry vain grandma who used to be a showgirl, and several other hilarious clichés designed to go well with chicken. As Variety said: "Bea Arthur is Aea Plus!"
2. A performance artist who stands in the park swinging his arms for 168 hours to raise awareness about International Awareness Raising Day.
3. A marble statue of Harmon Killebrew, taking a swing at it.
4. A pile of rocks slathered in Hershey's syrup sitting in an empty room at the Weisman with Benny Goodman records playing backward on hidden speakers, titled "Swing #3."
5. An independent movie about a young girl from Fergus Falls who deals with her stressful home life by attempting to set a Guinness Record for non-stop playground swinging. Or Film Board support for a movie filmed by the Coen brothers, which is the same thing but much more deadpan with a dead body in the second act.
Which of these is art? All of them, of course. Whether they're good art, or serious art, or lasting art, is another issue. Who decides?
There may be horse trading behind closed committee doors:
"Okay, fine. We'll fund the duck-stamp art museum and commission someone to paint John Wayne golfing, with an eagle and flag in the sky and the words THE DUKE NEVER TOOK A MULLIGAN, whatever that means, and in return we agree to buy 'Plastic Amerika,' a sculpture that consists of six severed Barbie heads in a box of Kitty Litter -- from the description, it screams whenever anyone approaches it, that'll be a hit with the security guards at the museum -- and fund a community theater production of 'Nell Armstrong,' a play that insists Woodrow Wilson personally suppressed the story of six suffragettes who went to the moon. Are we all happy now? Oh, and $37,000 to relocate the Pez Museum a mile south of the Center for Tracheotomy Research. Who dropped the ball on that one?"
It all depends on who staffs the commissions, of course. There are four ways to do this.
1) A panel composed entirely of ordinary folk who don't know art, but know what they like. Downside: They don't know art. Upside: They know what they like.
2) Half ordinary folk, half people from the arts communities. Downside: Scattered arguments, isolated fistfights, 30 percent chance of Harold Pinter. Upside: Fusion of opinion leads to musical version of "Waiting for Godot." (Happy ending: He shows up, and brings hot dish.)
3) A panel composed entirely of arts professionals who had their noses surgically lengthened so they could look down them at popular tastes. Downside: You'll take it, and you'll like it. Upside: You like it.
4) An arts czar. Forget citizen input; forget professional evaluations. It takes time and wastes money. Put the responsibility in the hands of one person, chosen entirely at random. If he decides to spend the entire budget on velvet Elvis paintings, then Minnesota has the most incredible collection of velvet Elvis paintings in the world. If he says we'll give everyone a paid three-day vacation to attend the Fringe Festival, then we become the state that takes a break to experience the thespian diversions. If she commands the construction of drive-in movie theaters in every town, then we lead the nation in outdoor communal cinema. I don't see the downside.
Well, that's not true. I can imagine how I'd have handled the job many years ago. "I propose building a giant spoon! An enormous spoon! With a cherry!"
They'd have 1,000 names on the recall petition before I finished the sentence.
jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 More daily at www.startribune.com/buzz
