Confessions of an Art Nerd
Throughout my life I have been called a nerd.
This has always been fine for me because I am a nerd. In fact I am multiple types of nerd.
To make things a worse, I seem to live in a perpetual state of Nerd Rage.
Statements that have sent me into nerd rage:
"Greedo shoots first." (SW nerd)
"Selig should overturn Joyce's call to give Galarraga the perfect game." (Sports nerd: not considered a type of nerd by many, but should be classified with other nerds.)
"Mac servers are now more stable than UNIX servers." (Tech nerd)
"Dio didn't invent the "devil horns" hand gesture, it was Motley Crue."(Metal nerd)
"The 1969 Mustang's engine is as well built as the '69 Charger's." (Car Nerd: again, not considered a type of nerd by many, but should be classified with other nerds.)
"Tasha Yar died for no reason." (Star Trek nerd)
"Pine is fine for most furniture needs."( Carpentry nerd.)
"Gimli was just there for comic effect." (Middle Earth nerd)
"Granule fertilizer works as well as liquid fertilizer." (Gardening nerd.)
"The Silver Line can get you to the Airport as fast as the T."(Boston nerd)
"X-Men Origins: Wolverine was a pretty good movie." (X-nerd)
"Baldessari Sing's Lewitt" has proven to be more influential than "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art." (Art nerd)
For some reason, very few people admit to being art nerds. I once called someone and art nerd and she was truly offended.
"I'm not a nerd, I'm a curator." she replied.
"Yeah, I pretty sure that's just someone who is a paid to be an art nerd." I said.
I have witnessed far more nerd rage over art than Star Wars.
I have seen two people, both in thousand dollar Gucci shoes, yelling at each other at an opening that Damien Hirst is crap (the strange thing is that they agreed with each other, just the extent to which he is crap!) I have seen two art historians almost come to blows over whether or not Hill and Adamson's calotypes of the village of New Haven in 1843 should be considered documentary work.
An opening is nothing more than a meeting of art nerds.
The Venice Biennale is the art nerd version of Comic-Con.
Big Red is New England's art nerd forum.
If you have any example of art nerd rage, please list them in the comments below.
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- “Baldessari Sing’s Lewitt”
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- Han shoots first
