St. Louis' Contemporary Art Scene Flourishes

There was a time when the Southside of St. Louis was a little bit seedy. Well, parts of it anyway. There was one segment of the population, composed mostly of German and some Irish immigrants, that had lived there all of their lives. It seemed that a lot of those households had unmarried children well into their forties still living with their parents. There was another group that consisted of displaced rural people from out state who had come to the city to work at one of the many nearby manufacturing plants. They brought along some habits that were frowned upon by the other locals, like a penchant for beer drinking and Saturday night fighting, and old rusted cars put up on cement blocks in their back yards. Some of them were bikers and that meant a rusted Harley parked up in the front yard instead.

I remember stopping for gas on the Southside years ago. I was wearing a T-Shirt with some kind of surreal design on the front, (I don’t even remember exactly what it was), but below it was a logo that read: “You Gotta Have Art.” As I was filling my tank, a guy at the pump next to me looked over and asked, “WHY?” He pointed at my shirt. He was a massive man wearing oil-stained jeans, a scraggly beard, and motorcycle boots, the kind with a silver buckle on the side. He stared at me behind a pair of wraparound sunglasses. At first I tried to explain, but then thought better of it and just shrugged and quickly got back into my car and drove off.

I’ve always been fond of classical art. Art Appreciation was one of my favorite classes in school. But, there was a time when I really didn’t “understand” contemporary art. Evidently a lot of other people in St. Louis didn’t either, considering the controversy when a large Serra sculpture was first placed downtown.