Franz Kline

Looking at minimalist abstract art comforts me. I don’t know why it comforts me. I’m not much to praise the genius of artists. Really it is because I don’t know how to define and attach the word genius to anyone (or anything). It’s not that I don’t think that there are countless people with talents or an intellect well beyond my own (not just the guys at the tech repair bar Herr Jobs has anointed). It’s just that I see genius as something inside of everyone. Genius simply defined as an idea no one else had… yet. I am currently entangled in a Franz Kline painting. Black, white, a square and a line. The more I observe it the more I am comforted. Perhaps it’s the Zen notion of simplicity and oneness. Or maybe it’s just the notion of how black and white symbolize opposing forces and conflict, blah, blah. Maybe I like squares. I think it may be the simple notion that there exists a group of people that find deep personal substance in this painting. There is enough substance that even makes it quite valuable to the oligarchs. Whatever anyone’s personal substance is, and I don’t want to know, there is an agreed understanding, and acceptance of the presumed randomness of human expression that flows out of us all.     -