The quality of any art has always been in the eye of the beholder.  Value, on the other hand, is usually comparative. Even if auction figures give the prize to Van Gogh it doesn’t mean his work is the most popular.  I still remember a favorite college professor saying that if we were really to study art history as consumed by the majority of Americans we would be studying the nuances of black velvet paintings.

So in the spirit of celebrating the artistic yearnings of all the nurdly nonconformists out there – here are some of the key things I learned in my brief curatorial career on what defines a “masterpiece” that will inspire the best ‘stare down the nose while sipping pretentious wine’ in the crowd of your choice.

I’m assuming you already have a doodle on notebook paper or something created in an art class at some point. If not, create one now – it really shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

Step 1.  Frame it. Or if it’s sculpture put it on a pedestal.  Even with art created by professionals who should know what they’re doing, the difference between something created at a demonstration in a shopping mall and something with a price tag is having a mat and frame.  See exhibit B above.

Step 2.  Give it a title. Nothing gets auctioned at Sotheby’s without a title, or hung in a museum without a title, or written about in books without a title, so make one up.  If you’re really stuck – label it as part of a series as in ‘Status Meeting #1′

Step 3. Make a museum/gallery label for it.  This doesn’t have to be a brass plaque although that would be a nice touch.  Whipping something up in Word and then cutting it out neatly will do in a pinch.  This is the traditional format:

• Title (I told you it needed one)
• Media (pen and ink, pencil,acrylic etc.)
• Artist (name, or Anonymous, or artist unknown)
• The date of creation (2009 or c.2009 – the c. stands for circa which is fancy museum talk for ‘somewhere around there’)
• Any nods to donors that provided funding or loans of the work

Example as seen in exhibit C above:

Doodle #219

Pixel manipulation

Anonymous

c.2009

On loan from the NurdleNet Collection

Extra credit:  Create a museum in your home or online. As long as you don’t claim to be a non-profit without talking to the nice IRS folks, there are no rules about who can be a museum and who can’t.  For some great examples of how far this can take you, see the museum of painting on velvet, The Velveteria, or my personal favorite, MOBA (the Museum of Bad Art).

Coming soon: An advanced lesson post on how to create extended gallery labels – creative, thoughtful prose full of the conflict, struggle, and/or sexual tension expressed in your masterpiece.  We’ll be using the same doodle from above as the subject. Really, you just aren’t looking hard enough if you can’t see the sexual tension.

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