As a child I developed this odd tradition with my father, which I think has turned into somewhat of a wider obsession, or maybe the obsession fueled the tradition, you never can tell with these things. Anyway, I defined an artistic movement called Crart or Crap Art. I’m not sure how it began but but it lived in the form of gifts to my father; gaudy, ugly looking bookmarks out of the offcuts of the the dance costumes my Mother used to make for me.
I would pick up the prime scraps of the glitter splattered lycras, the brightly coloured pane velvets and stitch them all together in layers, so that the different colours and textures would be revealed through strategically placed cutouts, finally adorning with them with fringing, sequins and sometimes a bit of iron on stiffening on the inside so that it would keep its shape. I would make these essentially as stocking fillers for father’s day and birthdays (I also gave him stuff he wanted, I’m not that cheap). Anyway they seemed to make him happy so I made quite a few of them.
But back to my my point, I think that my childhood interest in crart has lead to a fascination with camp, kitsch, cliche and badness in art in adulthood. I’m pretty proud of the fact that I’m one of the few people who weren’t paid to see Swept Away in a cinema (and also owns a copy on DVD), same with Crossroads and pretty much any other film starring a pop star. Why do I know all of the words to the entire script of Dirty Dancing? It’s certainly not because many any critics think of it as a great film.
I will actively go seek out films that people have told me are bad. I watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Don’t Mess with the Zohan in the last couple of weeks knowing full well that they were going to be terrible. Who could have ever imagined that a film starring Adam Sandler as an Israeli soldier who fakes his own death to become an ol’ lady banging hairdresser in New York could have been a bad idea?
My dirty secret is that I love Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, it is so cheap that the sauce is orange. I am so consumed by the shame of eating it that I can’t bring myself to cook prepare it while anybody else is in the house.
Maybe Crart is like junk food for the brain. If only there was some kind of way of developing brain-bulimia, where somehow my mind can puke out the crap I’ve ingested so that it can find space to be able to remember and quote intelligently from all of the very worthy books that I’ve read. Instead my natural response tends to be something along the juvenile lines of “farts.. Ha.ha.ha.” or worse.
Maybe if I ever decide to do my PhD or something I would study the impact and meaning of crart on the landscape of the collective consciousness. Exploring what demarcates the divide between high and low culture and what, if anything any of it actually means. Is there actually any moral imperative for preferring Proust over Pretty Woman? What draws people to the mental equivalent of junk food rather than haute cuisine? Does it even matter anymore?