I know, I’m not a modern person—some say not even Iron Age—so what does my opinion matter?

Yes, genius that I am, I predicted your skeptically raised eyebrow and imbedded myself in some actual modern person’s excursion, in a horseless carriage. Fortunately this young man is luddite-tolerant, despite being sedentary, luxury-minded and status-conscious.

Before our evaluation of the Baltimore Museum of Art we had to establish an understanding of civilization. We agreed on this standard being a subjective sliding scale of perceived desirability as a community of residence, within the objective framework of an organized society with ethical standards, and capacity for general provision of shelter and nourishment, but not free of coercion. We were to rate each section of the museum as if we were an alien considering residence in the society whose members produced the art collected therein. The rating scale would be 1 [nightmare world] to 10 [ideally cultured setting]. My companion’s scores are first, with mine second in brackets.

And so we proceeded in the following sequence.

A. European Painting & Sculpture, 1300 to 1927: 5 [6]

B. Antioch Mosaics, A.D. 500: 8 [10]

C. Cone Collection, 1850-1950: 8 [7]

D. Modern Art, 1940-1990s: 10 [8]

E. Andy Warhol Collection, 1964-86: 6 [5]

F. Contemporary Art, 1960-2011: 2 [1]

G. English Sporting Art, 1800s to 1900s: 1 [2]

What emerged—even though we both disagreed on each score—was a consistent agreement on an impression of cyclic civility-barbarity, with our current art reflecting an empty and even obscene sense of the aesthetic. The interesting thing to me was that I was made physically sick—actually became dizzy—from the modern audio visual art. The worst thing, what sent me fleeing for the English Sporting Art room [which we just knew would be wretched] was a piece that featured a bench vise mounted on a wall with a moldy [actually aspirating mold] pillow in its teeth. Even though the English Sporting Art room smelled ‘like Dracula’s butt-cleft’, I said, with a sigh of relief “I never thought I would be glad to walk through this aristocratic British horseshit. Those security people must get PTSD from patrolling that [contemporary] wing. How can they even do it for eight hours without sunglasses and ear plugs?”

We both agreed that the two most visibly appealing pieces were by Georgia O’Keefe, and that the most evocative piece was a horrifically abstract work by Andre Masson, a World War Two French refugee, depicting [I think] an Orwellian subversion of man by society, which [to me] seemed prophetic after wading through the contemporary morass of unappealing angst one door beyond. Our overall impression was of extremely attentive craftsmanship in all pre-modern art, an expansion of metaphor in modern art [sometimes at the expense of craftsmanship], and a near complete collapse of aesthetics and craftsmanship in contemporary art.

My friend, if he were an extraterrestrial immigrant, would choose 1950s America as a place of residence, while I preferred ancient Antioch. We both rated Victorian England and our own present as the least desirable destination of the mind.