CHICAGO—Saying he has heard good things but hasn’t yet had a chance to check it out, local 31-year-old Kevin Regan reported Thursday he has been meaning to catch up on the whole of human artistic endeavor.
Despite wanting for a while now to “see what all the buzz is about” surrounding the sum total of mankind’s aesthetic creations, Regan admitted he has simply not yet taken the time to “really get into” the 40,000-year-old means of representing the human experience through various visual and auditory media.
“From what everyone says, it sounds pretty cool, but I just haven’t gotten around to it yet,” said Regan, who explained he has been meaning to follow up on friends’ recommendations to check out sculpture, photography, the Western literary canon, cinema, printmaking, traditional Asian puppet theater, and all of the performing arts. “I figure I should probably start from the beginning, with Paleolithic ivory carvings, and work my way forward from there. But I’ve also been told there’s some really awesome stuff going on with architecture from the Roman Empire through the European Renaissance, so that could be a good place to start, too.”
“I’ve also heard music is pretty great,” Regan added.
Although Regan reported having encountered bits and pieces of humanity’s complete artistic output in the past, he confessed he has never taken in the entire collective body of emotionally and culturally expressive works in depth. In particular, Regan mentioned having previously caught brief glimpses of Vincent Van Gogh’s Olive Trees In A Mountainous Landscape, the Chrysler Building, and dance, as well as once overhearing a 35-second clip of the 1996 Blackstreet song “No Diggity.”
Regan stated that he was motivated to give all of art a try, not only because of the positive word of mouth but also because he frequently feels left out of conversations whenever the topic turns to popular situation comedies, alternative rock, classic Hollywood films, the oeuvre of eighth-century Chinese poet Li Bai, or fictional storytelling in all its forms across the millennia, from oral traditions to the present.
“It’s pretty frustrating to hear everyone at work discussing how amazing novels or televised dramas are and for me to have no idea what they’re talking about,” said Regan, adding that he was looking forward to being able to participate in future conversations about pottery, jazz, the woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer, French grand opera, outsider artists like Henry Darger, and Star Wars. “I’ve heard from some people that you can pretty much skip everything between 30,000 B.C. and ancient Greece, but I’m worried if I do that I’ll get lost later on. I’ve got a long weekend coming up, so I’ll probably use that as an opportunity to start with early cave paintings and just binge my way right on through to the Dutch masters.”
At press time, Regan had reportedly decided to give up on all of art after being disappointed with the first three episodes of Heroes.
