Peter Wisse replied to Steve S's question:

>>Is this a real painting?  Have you seen it?
>
>Yes, but actually it was not blue, but red, Barry Newman's "who is
>afraud of red, yellow and blue".  It was in the Rijksmuseum in
>Amsterdam, ...

Interestingly, quite a furore was raised in Ottawa when our National
Gallery acquired a painting by this man (who hails from Chicago, IIRC).
At least a million, and perhaps 3, was spent for the piece (...the name
of which I do not wish to recall).

We like our public libraries in Canada, and appreciate good CM radio.
But blowing such money on that 'art' sat well with precious few Canadians:
it was a tall thing done in two colours, 50% navy blue and the other half
royal blue, as I recall.

Come to think of it, I once saw it.  Its only redeeming value, afraid, was
the discussion it elicited about the meaning of art and ways to spend tax
dollars more wisely.

Such exercises in blue, like sheep fetuses in brine, don't count to me
as art any more than X-many minutes of random, unstaged noise amount to a
piece of real music, however polemical the lesson.  Nor for Peter, I take
it.

Seeing money spent that way gives me the urge to embrace right wing
intransigence about spending tax dollars ...even its more neanderthal
extremes.

 From what I gather, Cage can at least be credited with a sense of humour.
At best, he even hit one extreme edge of the musical envelope; no mean
achievement in any art.  In other, more commercial arts, some people are
seemingly out to take advantage of the foolish.

Bert Bailey