In the duty-free store on the way home from Argentina, I bought a Johnnie Walker sampler pack, a 200ml bottle each (in ascending order of price) of Black, Green, Gold, and Blue. Having never had any JW except Red (which was quite bad), I thought it would be a relatively inexpensive way to try them all.
I had always heard that Johnnie Walker Blue was one of the finest whiskies in the world. At $200 a bottle, I would certainly expect it to be. When I started sampling my purchases, I agreed that the quality went up as the price went up. Then I asked S for a little help.
She poured a couple of sips of each into their own glasses, and labeled them A thru D. A simple blind taste test. The first time, Black was the only one I got correct, and I tagged what was really the Blue as Green. I picked the Gold as the Blue. A few days later, I tried again, and got none of them correct, but I again tagged the Gold as the Blue.
As I had assumed the one I liked the most would be the Blue, one thing I learned from my experiment is that my favorite of the Johnnie Walker’s is Gold. I also learned that I really do not have a very refined palate when it comes to scotch. The third, and most important thing I learned, is that labels influence my thought process. When I knew what I was drinking, I thought Blue was the best. When I didn’t know, I couldn’t pick the Blue to save my life, and actually preferred Gold.
What does this have to do with anything? I was at the Guggenheim today, and all of the Johnnie Walker experimentation came rushing back to me. In an effort to achieve #41 – Develop an appreciation of visual arts, I decided to spend my day off at a museum. As most other museums in New York are closed on Monday, I went to the Guggenheim. The first thing I learned was that I am not quite ready to appreciate 20th century art. The second, and most important thing I learned was that, in everything, people pay attention to the labels.
I was standing in front of a Picasso, I don’t recall which one, when a couple walked up next to me. The man, after looking at the placard, said, “Oooh, look, a Picasso.” The woman replied, very promptly, “Wow, I really like it! I love the colors!”
I don’t mean to imply that the couple couldn’t have appreciated the finer details of the work in the few seconds they looked at it before rendering a judgement, but I wonder if their reaction would have been the same if the artist had a name that was unknown to them.
I paid attention to my own browsing habits, and noticed that the first thing I did was look at the placard to see the artist’s name. If it was a name I recognized, I seemed to pay more attention to the work. As I wound my way up the spiral, I tried always to look at the work first, then look at its placard. Unfortunately, by this time, I had left the galleries that made sense to me and had wandered up to Rothko and Kandinsky, so whether I knew the artist or not, I was still lost.
Walking into the rainy afternoon, I took two lessons with me: pay less attention to the labels and more attention to what is being labeled; and I really need to start back at the beginning of art history and work my way up to the last century.
