Om Mane Padme HohhhhhmMMMy-Gosh

A friend spends some of her lunch break each day perusing the internet for diversion from life in 'Corporate America'.  She kindly shares some of the more amusing cyber-nuggets with me.

Today's bit-o-gold and glitter shared from the internet was about yoga images on parking tickets as a soothing exercise in public art. 
Or should I say, in this case (pun intended) public 'ars' (latin for art).  Don't get me wrong, I'm in favor of public art, there are some superb examples of public art in this country; but this does not appear to be one of them, imho. 

I will  make a special effort to see what 'Click and Clack' on NPR, the witty NPR radio car mechanics who broadcast from 'our fair city' Cambridge, MA have to say on the subject. 

The anticipation leads me to recall famous comments on mixing art with other causes......."We must have religion for religion's sake, morality for morality's sake, as with art for art's sake ... the beautiful cannot be the way to what is useful, or to what is good, or to what is holy; it leads only to itself." (Du vrai, du beau, de bien),said by French philosopher Victor Cousin, in a lecture at the Sorbonne in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.  Or the less articulate earlier version of the  sentiment, "Art for art's sake, with no purpose, for any purpose perverts art. But art achieves a purpose which is not its own." , by French philosopher Benjamin Constant in 1804.

Then we have "Ars Gratia Artis", the Metro Goldwyn Mayer studio motto from the 1930s, attributed to Hollywood's Howard Dietz. (I'm also a fan of classic movies, including the cable Turner Classic Movies - can you tell?)

I'm betting the reaction to receiving parking tickets will continue to be more like the distinctive roar of the MGM lion in the opening moments of old movies from that studio, than the philosophy-of-art in the MGM motto reaction.

But at a safe distance from Cambridge, Massachusetts, it gave me a chuckle.  Hope it does the same for you; because current events shouldn't only be the heavy, serious things in life.