I come from a long line of chicken-killing ARTISTS

Until I read this article ten minutes ago I'd gone my entire life assuming I just came from a long line of chicken-killers.

But no; apparently killing chickens is "art."

Hey, that's nothing... I've got a good friend who has had pictures of his pecker adorning the walls of more than one hitherto reputable art gallery...

A hell of a lot depends on context in the world of art.

Where my folks came from, essentially being born into serfdom on the estate of Graf Kiss-Mein-Arsch in the Germanic provinces of Poland, if you didn't want to be a vegetarian you had to kill something.

That didn't necessarily make you an artist.

But you got to eat meat.

Those where simpler times...

The folks brought their old-world ways to the new land. Seeing my dear mother axe the heads off chickens was a regular part of my childhood. You can understand why we immigrants were viewed with a certain trepidation by the other folks.

I suppose it's not much different than how we now view the folks who slaughter a baby sheep in their bathtub on the 17th floor of their apartment building in Brampton at their high holidays.

Anyway, we gradually assimilated; my dear mother has been buying chickens at the grocery store for decades now.

So fast forward to today, and killing chickens is art!

At least at the Alberta College of Art and Design.

I'm in. Hell, this is at least as meaningful as Serrano's gambit with that plastic crucifix. And it vastly out-ranks anything Damien Hirst has done in the past twenty years.

The dullards who run ACAD obviously didn't get it. Artist Miguel and his teacher, veteran instructor and established artist Gord Ferguson, have been given the heave-ho by the Alberta art college.

It's not the first time that chicken beheading has become newsworthy... google "Miracle Mike."

That's not art; it's just sh*t

I have to admit it; I don't get modern art.

I've tried to get it. Even went so far as to read a couple Clement Greenberg essays. Can't say it helped me much.

I'm given to pondering the 'what is art' question because one of the greats of American abstract expressionism went to the big gallery in the sky this week. Helen Frankenthaler had a career that spanned well over half a century. I like some of her stuff, a lot of it in fact. But I don't get it.

Take Nature Abhors a Vacuum for instance. I like it. I see a green eagle leaving her nest. Or maybe it's a green sunset. Either way, it's pleasant. I've got a spot for it in the upstairs hall here at Falling Downs. Unfortunately something called the "art market" makes this single painting worth several farms just like this one. How is such a thing even possible?

For a small fraction of the price I could have an original Marla Olmstead. She too produces colorful and pleasant canvases that would look good in the upstairs hall. Very similar in style to Frankenthaler.

Then again, I could go a step further and produce a pleasant and colorful work myself. After all, it is not as though I have never spilled paint. In fact, when I was painting the kitchen ceiling I knocked a gallon of Daffodil Ambiance from the top of the stepladder. The many subtle shades of yellow splatter on the maple floor really drew the eye in. If I'd had the forsight to place a canvas on the floor I might have had something.

So why is Marla Olmstead's spilled paint more valuable than mine but less valuable than Frankenthaler's? Who makes these decisions? Clement Greenberg? The "art market"?

It seems to me that some of the artists prominent today got their art education at business school. Has Damien Hirst every produced anything without at least one eye already on the "art market"?

At least I get Hirst. I don't get modern art, but I get kitsch.