The Eye of the Beholder

I have been accused of wine snobbery. Perhaps it's the circles I travel in. When I upped the price I was willing to spend on a bottle of wine to, on average, $25, I was met with uncomprehending stares. When partial cases started arriving at the house I was queried as to why such lengths needed to be gone to. When first one wine fridge and then a larger wine fridge came to live with us, there was some snickering. I was ok with this because my drink of choice is wine. It's what I like to drink with my food.

I know nothing about wine. Except what I like.

I go to a restaurant, they bring me a wine list, I barely glance at it. The sommelier or waiter returns and I tell him or her what I'm ordering, and that I like unusual wines. I don't care where they're from or what color they are, I want something different, something that really goes well with the food I'm eating, something I'd remember. 80% of the time I have perfectly enjoyable wines I would never go out of my way to find again. The other 20%? Well, that's where we run into trouble. For the other 20%, I will expend boundless energy and time to tracking down more of the wine. Snobbish? I don't know. Obsessive. Yes.

But I've never thought much of wine ratings. What one person finds tremendous I might not, and, as I had to tell a wine shop proprietor recently, I would never spend more than $30 on a wine I had never tasted just because someone else liked it. To me, that's just stupid.

Yet, when confronted by art, another fairly subjective medium, I have the feeling that there is capital-G good art and capital-B bad art. Which is ridiculous because I know no more about art than I do about wine which means good art is art that's good for me. For a couple of years, we took the easy way out decorating our walls. I've gotten more proficient with a camera, we take trips to pretty places, and some of the 45 million pictures I take are frame worthy. This was fine in an apartment, but we seem to be working with a lot more space now, and our walls are starting to look a little bare.

But I can't afford ART art, and I wouldn't want to buy bad art.

No, wait, I don't care. It's what I like that's important. So, I've started browsing the artist's democracy, Etsy. For a couple hundred bucks I could help a struggling artist out, get several pieces for my walls, and it doesn't matter if the art isn't good because if I only spent 60 bucks on it, I can throw it out when I tire of it and not really care.

Well, now I feel liberated. I bought three bottles of wine on spec and didn't like them, but I was only out $60, so they'll do. Imagine treating art the same way! I'm going to put together a slide show for devoted partner so we can agree on things, but this will be my contribution: we will have stuff on the walls that is unique and, possibly, cool.