Le Petit Kandinsky Prince

   Alright, so I totally kicked the butts of those tests I told you yesterday that I had! Kind of mean of me, I know, but... they're tests. You really can't anthropomorphize them all that much.

   First off, anyway, let me start today's post with a big shout-out to '90s post grunge, jangle pop band Deep Blue Something, who really happened to tie together my really weird lines of thought today under one neat little bow of a post title. Yay.

   Okay, so. This is going to matter, but... our landlords, the Potters, are just the greatest in the world, and sent out a survey this afternoon on suggestions for this winter semester activity they're thinking of doing. Remember that now. And let's zoom out a bunch.

   I was people-watching today. There was a devotional today, with Elder Bednar of the 12, which I can't remember a word of seeing as how I was unconscious for it; asleep for basically the whole thing-- it's a General Authority, which is probably pretty major I guess? Though spending 2 years on Temple Square may have damaged my significance sensor, regarding that kind of thing... Everyone showed up, though, so I spent the couple hours beforehand just watching all the people pour in (and became absolutely terrified when I realized how many different ways there are just to walk and how unique everyone's gait is, not even counting for the arm movements.) But, people came in. Alone, in groups, as couples holding hands. Or whatever. I like watching people. This experience is also important, and you should remember this as well. Let's zoom in now, but elsewhere.

   As a culture we've got a really weird relationship with art, but... it's art. So first of all, yes, you really can't anthropomorphize it all that much, and also first-point-onest of all it'd be more of personification, but, second of all: it's art, how else is our relationship with it going to be? A relationship doesn't have to be non-weird to be healthy still. Still.

   Wassily Kandinsky was a painter. You know him. Believed that, like, music doesn't need to be representational to still be beautiful? He made, the more awesomer of, his paintings non-representational as well, just like music. And we love him for it.

He also died more than 70 years ago, so his works are totally public domain in the US!

   Imagine a Kandinsky painting-- let's say this one in fact, Delicate Tension, though you could go for On White II or even On White I for that matter, or just, whatever-- imagine this painting as, instead of a painting, the layout to some particular bit of graphic design. Most likely an advertisement. Would that be somehow heretical, if that were the case? Something tells me that it is. And yet... We make kitschy little refrigerator magnet reproductions of the Mona fridging Lisa; is that heretical? Or is it because the Mona Lisa isn't, itself, a fridge magnet, that makes it so that it can be so?

   If Kandinsky paintings, as paintings, didn't exist, and there were text and logos instead of his swoopy squigglies and solid shapey shapes, would it be remotely the same, even if his designs are just layouts at the core? What if we took the originals, we've got reproductions anyway we don't need these, and applied our copy and graphic directly onto the paintings, so that the new originals, they're all adverts from now on? That's, basically, my original question.

   We used the Mona Lisa as a comparison beforehand, so let me point out that this same thing happened to the original of that-- though it was more of, sawing off the ends of it to make it fit the wall better, than actually any LHOOQy loos scribbling 'staches on the original there or anything, still-- it was to the most priceless painting of all time. What difference really is there between doing that to the Mona Lisa, and taking less valuable art, and put it to use, selling something...? And if you do do that to the art: it's still awesome, right?

   That's all very interesting to ponder in the hypothetical, but how about we apply questions of the relationship between art and consumerism to the real world...?

   There is, of course, a (pretty darn gorgeous-looking) Little Prince movie coming out this March, a couple of weeks after Zootopia arrives. That's where the Winter Semester Activity from earlier comes in, albeit with a totally different moral dilemma: if we were to go see a movie at Fat Cats for this activity, what would it be? I have no interest in either Allegiant or Dawn of Justice, and though of course I said the same thing of The Force Awakens, it still comes down between The Little Prince and Zootopia. Zootopia I'm going to see anyway, of course... probably, barring extreme circumstances, more than once. Do I make one of those times with the activity, or do I catch something I wouldn't otherwise have the chance to, seeing as how I never go to movies except under exceptions like this, and Star Wars, and Zootopia? It strikes me as a moral decision, the choice between values and, values.

   I put in my vote for The Little Prince, over Zootopia. Wild.

   But that's not the moral conundrum I wanted to talk about.

   Browsing Amazon, getting suggestions for things I might be interested in, there was a lot of Little Prince stuff. Like, a lot, a lot. Some of it was even connected to the movie... This is the real-world, here. The question, about the relationship between art and consumerism. I'm willing to let Zootopia come out with a bunch of, vinyl figures and everything, because it's Disney, and more power to them. I'm willing to let My Little Pony do the same, because it's Hasbro and that's their job. And besides, all of those things are amazing, amazing things.

   Same with the Little Prince stuff. I mean, have you seen this? It's wonderful stuff, and it increases the world's total pool on wonderful. But it's also... I don't know, but it reminds me of the scene in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, where, yes it's great that steak is falling from the sky, but isn't the steak a bit... big?

   It's not sawing up the Mona Lisa, by far. But it is releasing a slew of tie-in merchandise for The Little Prince. The book that taught us what it means to be a child, and what it means to be a grown-up, and what really matters in the world.

  Do overpriced imported action figures of characters not even in the book (yet who are essential audience surrogates and figures to states the book's central themes) matter? Do the opportunities for imagination the figures provide matter? Does Jeff Bridges have throat cancer or something, or does he really just put a bunch of marbles in his mouth before saying anything nowadays?

   I don't know.

   But, remember the people-watching from earlier? How human beings themselves, ourselves, can put me into the uncanny valley just through normal human movement? How we walk together, and walk alone? How  we reach out and hold each other so tightly, grabbing each other's hands as though it meant something? I thought a lot about how beautiful people are, and how I'd quickly be able to find common ground with anyone in the large large stream of crowd, enough even to know and to love and to be loved and to be in love, with any of those people, potentially any at all.

   And I thought about the Prince's rose, and about the field of roses, and about the quality that separated them...

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/andy-warhol-thirty-are-better-than-one-1