[MassExodus]

During the 4 years I wasted earning a "Bachelors Degree" in Art, I spent one semester in an independent study of oil painting.

Instead of working hard to fulfill the course requirement, I drank beer and played Rugby.

Not wanting to show up empty handed at the critical review period,
I covered a canvas with various shades of green and palet knife in hand,
scrawled 3 vived red vertical forms in the vicinity of the middle.

This "painting" was received as a work of "ingenious sensibility",
it was at that point I realized that the piece of paper they handed me from this Liberal Arts College was utterly worthless.

[cgbg]

Mass

I personally don't like most modern art, but your story actually demonstrates something different than you think it does.

The punchline: your art-teacher was an ignorant fraud.

How do I know that the teacher is to be condemned rather than all of modern art?

I had a great-aunt (now passed away) who had a knack for recognizing modern art that would become valuable in the future. She lived in NYC, and for years purchased starving artist's paintings with pocket change, and hung them on her wall as a hobby.

Thirty years later her collection was valued at tens of millions of dollars. Her insurance company refused to insure the pieces unless she installed a state of the art security system. Today her paintings are on display in galleries around the world (and I am still poor--rrrrrr :-) ).

So there is something on going on here--but I confess I can't tell the real from the fake.

Obviously your art teacher couldn't either! :-)

My great-aunt's name, btw, is Florence Barron. If you do an Internet search you can see what she looked like back in the sixties--Andy Warhol did her "portrait".