I’ve been in museums all over the world. I love art museums. Can spend hours, days there and never want to leave. I was an art major in college and spent a LOT of time studying art.

But the majority of my understand and appreciation for art is based in European art of the last few hundred years. That was the center of everything I’d studied. And there is a lot to love and appreciate.

The Renaissance etc, yadda, yadda, so forth and so on.

Now THAT was art. These guys could really paint! That bowl of fruit looks JUST like a bowl of fruit, and actually even better than the REAL bowl of fruit.

And look at that painting of those Dutch guys. They look so wise and dramatic.

But this weekend I started on the top floor at the Dallas Museum of Art, a couple floors ABOVE the European paintings. I wandered through amazing artifacts from around the globe. Carved and painted and woven pieces from dozens of cultures. Amazing pieces of beautiful design and vivid imagination.

Then I read a sign about a particular culture from an island in the middle of an ocean. Their belief was that EVERYTHING on the planet had a soul. Every rock, leaf, piece of wood, person, animal, bug etc. And it was their duty to bring that soul in those objects to it’s fullest potential by turning that rock or piece of wood into what it was MEANT to be.

Of course, they were also headhunters and would sanctify a new building by killing someone.

But to them, a piece of wood WANTED to be a shield, or a daggar or a support for a home or a simple decoration. They were doing a sacred duty to elevate that simple wood to it’s fullest potential. It was their duty.

And the pieces they liberated were beautiful. Design and creative thinking that would rival any “trained” artist on earth.

As I walked through the centuries and the cultures, I eventually  wandered into the section for European paintings. My original goal in being there. And I walked around looking at the puffed up embellishment of the portraits. The amazing prowess of delivery for a sugary, essentually SILLY, final product. All very impressive and beautiful to look at, but with no real calories. It suddenly became to me so many beautiful low calorie desserts.

Then it occured to me. Pow. Right in the face. New ephiphany!

This stuff is all commerce. It’s advertising. It’s the same stuff we do in the office all day, except created with analog tools. Everything I saw was created by an artist for a client. It wasn’t created to secure a place in paradise. It wasn’t created because the creator really BELIEVED it was necessary.

Each piece was created to make a rich patron look better than they really did. Each piece was created to go over a fireplace, as decoration, as an ego boost with the final goal being the exchange of money.

So it’s all advertising.

Not that there’s anything wrong with advertising. I do it all day. I think the world needs this kind of communication… But it’s all artificial.

These “primitive” people created pieces that meant everything to themselves and those around them. They’d spend days, weeks, months creating something beautiful for reasons far beyond our imagination. Time didn’t matter to them the way it does to us. For someone to spend years creating an object was fine. For someone living in a jungle seeing nothing but the natural world, creating a supernatural object could change the lives of everyone around.

We’re surrounded by so much crap that we dont think about it any more.

And imagine if you will, how would these people think about what we do all day to produce art, and what that art was accomplishing.

Now, imagine if you will, moving 500 years ahead to see what THOSE commercial artists are producing and why.

So what’s my point? Several actually, and being an Ad Guy, I’ll bullet point them out.

- Next time you go to an art musuem, start in the “primitive” section first. The closer you get to our art, the more you’ll agree it gets sillier and sillier.

- Appreciate WHY a piece of art was created. It’s as important as the finished piece.

- Most art created in the last 500 years is a product that someone made to exchange for food, a bottle of wine and a place to sleep.

- Downtown Dallas is cool.

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