Really? An art blog?

A couple of years ago I went to visit a friend in London and he took me to the Tate for lunch. Afterwards, we went through the museum together. He's an attorney, but never really got into art much and I basically devoted my entire undergraduate time to the subject and the practice of art. I figured rather than try and explain why every piece was amazing, I'd just tell him cool factoids about the artists, or why a piece was valuable, or just why something wasn't "total crap" in an art historical context even if it seemed totally stupid to him.

When I was in college my professors would tell me that I had a real knack of explaining art in layman's terms. I don't know if that's totally true, but I do know that it's always seemed a shame that something lovely and emotionally connective was kept so mysteriously out of reach to the regular dude on the street.

So, here we go: Art, for Cocktails. Hoping to bring a little more pleasure to the art viewer in you! Mainly, I think I'll visit shows at museums and write about the artist and some of their work. But sometimes, I'll probably just babel about artists you "should know about" in straight shooter terms. Hope you'll enjoy!
BTW, the banner has the works of (top, l to r: Egon Schiele (who had a weird foot fetish and never painted them); Jan Van Eyke wedding portrait laden with sexual symbolism; Jackson Pollack; my personal favorite, Edouard Manet's Le Fifre; Robert Gober; the amazing Nan Goldin.... who really somehow made the sad, so gorgeous; Freida Kahlo's self portrait called Los Dos Freidas; Dorothea Lange who captured the dustbowl/ depression on film; Jean-Michel Baquiat's (another BK native/ part Puerto Rican like myself) statement against police brutality; a portrait by Paul Cezanne. He would make his sitters sit for hundreds of sessions until he got the image correct; Coco Fusco, performance artist and poet and one time Fort Greene resident.