Can Art Fart?

By Sonya Worthy

Staff Writer

"an Art Fart?" I asked myself one afternoon while leafing through The New Yorker magazine. The question was spurred by an advertisement of the Unemployed Philosophers Guild, selling silly and "sophisticated" gifts. The gift previewed in the ad was The Giggling Mona Lisa Pillow. It read,

Millions have pondered her expression, now it's finally clear: squeeze this full color pillow and Mona giggles...

Now, let me ask you a question: Have you ever attributed a voice to Mona? Have you ever wondered, "Does Mona moan? Or groan? Or giggle?"

Well, I hadn't. I'd just assumed she was mute. I'd taken the Mona Lisa to be what it was on the surface, a two dimensional oil painting. I saw paint brushed into the design of a smirking woman, and that was it. To me, she was flat, stagnant, and 491 years old. There was no way she could giggle -she would crack the paint. She wasn't magic like the Buttersworth syrup woman I'd watched in commercials as a kid, she was art and art could not giggle.

But, reading the advertisement made me wonder, can art giggle, I mean, even if it hasn't been reproduced, draped over cotton batting, and fitted with an electronic giggling device? And if art could appeal to my auditory system, I supposed it could appeal to my gustatory, tactile, and my olfactory system as well. And that's when, after prolonged thought on the meaning and purpose of art, I asked that zany question I started this article with:

Can art fart?

and answered, Yes, yes it can, and I believe that is precisely what the Unemployed Philosophers Guild was trying to say. Well, maybe not exactly. Perhaps their point wasn't flagellation, per se, but rather the idea that art works upon a conglomeration of senses, auditory (and olfactory) as well as visual. We sense the world with a lot more than just our eyes. We hear, touch, taste, and smell. Artists, through their work, give their own rendition of the world, and the more senses it can encompass, the more vivid and intriguing that world becomes. They can draw you in, first your eyes, then your ears, and then there you are, sitting next to Mona, giggling too, because someone, maybe a distant figure in the background cut a fart.