I've never been an expert at art, and until just a few years ago, I didn't really even take an interest in enjoying it.  When I moved back to Baton Rouge in the late 1990s, I started going over to New Orleans quite often, and I found myself enjoying looking through the various galleries in the French Quarter, just enjoying the various works (typically while sipping on an "adult" beverage of some sort).

Over the years, I have really come to enjoy looking at art in general, and some of my favorite time spent in the Big Easy still involves walking around the galleries, usually during the day on a Saturday or Sunday of a long weekend road trip.  Since moving to Houston, I've been able to get on various mailing lists for openings at a couple of different galleries; sipping wine and looking at art is a great start to the evening.

I've found that I prefer works that aren't "obvious"; I'm not a big fan of the Impressionists.  Fields of flowers or bowls of fruit just don't do it for me.  What really pulls me in are typically paintings that make you wonder what's going on outside the painting, off the edges, or paintings where the use of color is very striking and evokes a certain mood, or paintings that are a bit bizarre and might have something different each time they are viewed.

There are a few artists that always seem to catch my eye, some obvious, others maybe less well known and not so obvious.  Robert Cook comes to mind as someone who uses colors so adeptly that even the most stark painting catches your attention.  Similarly, Jose Basso paints what is essentially the same landscape in Chile in every painting I've seen by him, yet the colors draw your eye each time.

My real favorites, however, seem to be Surrealists, so of course I have become a huge fan of Salvador Dali.  I love the way his paintings typically hold such bizarre elements, but still invite the viewer in for more (in some cases, to discover things even more bizarre).  I was, most likely like most fans, first drawn to Dali by the painting Persistence of Memory, which I would say is his most famous.  Typically when I mention it to someone, if they don't recognize the painting by name they instantly recognize the "melting" clocks.  Something about that painting never fails to catch my eye — not just the clocks themselves but the desolate scenery.  It is my favorite by far.

When traveling, I now try to catch a Dali (sounds like there should be some sort of pun there, doesn't it?) whenever possible; I even went to the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg (Florida, unfortunately, not Russia) — I highly recommend it, even if you don't consider yourself a big "fan" of his work, because he has so many different styles that I think there's something for everyone and anyone there.

Other surrealists I've come to like (I'm using the "small 's'" designation because I'm not necessarily sure whether or not the artists are considered "formally" part of the Surrealist movement; forgive my ignorance, but I'm speaking more in terms of tone and style than strict definition) include Rene Magritte and Jordan Ivanov.  The Menil Collection museum in Houston has a great exhibition of surrealists taking up nearly 3 rooms; I'm told they have a Dali as well but it hasn't been on display when I've visited.

My last trip to New Orleans featured one of my aforementioned strolls through the galleries.  It was, perhaps, the most fruitful such trip I've ever had, as I walked into a rather nondescript-looking gallery and found a treasure trove of etchings:  by Matisse, by Picasso, and, yes, by Dali himself.  Each of these works was for sale (the least expensive Dali I saw was about $10,000; the one I liked best was something around $100,000.  I don't expect to get it for Christmas although you can bet it'll be on my list).

This gallery also introduced me to an artist mentioned above:  Jose Basso.  If you've never seen his work, I highly recommend it.  The proprietor of the gallery was very excited about his future, and from what I saw it was with good reason.

Further down the street, I came upon some more enjoyable works, but my last trip was into a place with several works by another artist I mentioned previously, Robert Cook.  I had first seen Cook at a couple of galleries in the Quarter a few years ago, before Katrina.  His name had slipped my mind, but I had vivid memory of several of his works.  Seeing his paintings again scratched the itch of remembrance.  All-in-all, it was a great afternoon.

Then, this past weekend, I found myself in New York, home of the famous Museum of Modern Art.  I decided to check it out and to finally see Persistence of Memory.  While wandering through the rooms past some paintings based on the Civil War that reminded me of ink-blot Rorshach tests and — I'm not kidding — plain white canvases that supposedly speak of the starkness of existence, I came upon a famous work:  Starry Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh.  I mentioned above my dislike for Impressionists, so it shouldn't be surprised that I was basically unimpressed.  Yet the next two paintings were great and much more interesting.  One was by Edvard Munch, famous for The Scream, and while I don't recall the name I thought it was more interesting than his more famous work.

Finally I made it to the 5th floor, where Persistence is supposed to be.  Supposed to be, because I was greeted by an announcement that Persistence is on loan.  In Los Angeles.  So I didn't get to see it, but did get to see their "other" Dali, which was pretty cool:  it was a series of paintings on glass plates, arranged to invoke a 3-D effect.

I don't know a lot about art (as I'm sure many have realized long before now), but I do know what I like, and I think that's good enough.  Snobbery is overrated in a lot of areas, and as long as a person is at least open to expanding his horizons, I think that's a positive thing.  Some artistic works, whether songs, paintings, movies, or books, are made simply for enjoyment, to better our lives.  Others have a more serious, deeper purpose.  To me, a single piece of art can be either one or both, depending on the viewer, and I do believe that a work can take on new meaning to the beholder beyond or even unrelated to what the artist originally intended.  That's perhaps what I enjoy most.