Most people who do not study arts don’t understand it. It’s pretty simple, art has become extremely sophisticated and people who are not into the whole art movement can have a very hard time understanding what art really is. It’s not for fuckin happy campers anyways. To make a long story short: “The engine for art is innovation.”

You can paint a pretty picture? You can draw your grandma perfectly? You can create some abstract art? Been there done that. As long as you can’t deliver something new, please head over to the applied art section of the world. You might find a job in the design industries. After all, the last thing that art is about, are beautiful pictures. Let’s take Marcel Duchamps Pissoir, most people simply don’t get it, that’s sad enough. Art is simply one fucked up and sophisticated process, that has to be questioned, who are the people who say what art is and what is not? What can art do and what can’t art do? Art should not please you. It has to be a challenge. And it has to be something new. Something unqiue. Something that has yet to be done.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.

Start with Duchamp to see the first glimpse of real art, then visit the conceptual artists of the 60’s to see radical concepts and then, once you arrive in our time start hugging street art, as it is the purest art right now.

Screw it, most modern artists don’t draw well… don’t ask someone who calls himself an artist if he can draw or paint well, just shut up and ask what he does. You can determine now if he is an artist, or even worse, a faker.

Being a book and movie geek there are a lot of stories that you read and watch, some are good, others plain suck. Which movies are good enough to watch them after you read the book?

1. The Godfather – Even though the book had to be shortend and a few aspects of the whole Mario Puzzo story are lost in translation this is one of the best book adaptions ever, it has depth, style and formed the image of the american mafia. It does not matter that you can see every shade of the wonderfully drawn characters that you can read about in the book.

2. Fight Club – One of the best(very subjective) and more importantly highly influencing movie’s directed in the 90’s delivers every punch line and is as politically incorrect as the book. Watch the movie and read all the books by Chuck Palanihuk, those really mess with the society like literature should do.

3. Mystic River – Dennis Lehane always writes books with some nasty little twist. This movie is one of the best adaptions you can watch and you should make sure you watch and read this epic about trust, betrayel and horrible events. Clint Eastwood did the best job possible.

4. Sin City – It’s one of those movies that does not get better the more you watch it, still it’s one of the best (comic-)book to movie adaptions. It’s actually not an adaption, it’s a comic on a screen with all the cheesy dialoges and overdrawn characters involved. Thumbs up Robert Rodriguez, let’s see if Sin City 2 will work as well.

5. The Hunt for Red October – An allstar cast and the good’ol fear of the cold war make this movie worthwhile. You can hate or love Clancy, his books are read by many and this has to be the strongest adaption of one of his books.

6. High Fidelity – John Cusack drives this film. A great book about love and the hardships life throws at you put into one compelling movie. As if the book was written for John to perform it.

Sidenote: Everyone must have high expactations for the upcoming shutter island. Scorcese usually does a great job, even though Leo does not fit into that leading role. Nevertheless it will be hard to mess this up as the Lehane book was brilliantly twisted and the Departed was a great adaption as well, even though it was a simple copy from another movie. Go & get the book before you watch the movie, there is still plenty of time to finish it.