One of the best pieces of art I’ve ever experienced probably was not deliberately created as art, but I had the kind of strong reaction to it that I think a lot of modern art tries to evoke.
The object: a knotted plastic bag containing a pair of rotting plums, slung over a tree branch next to the overpass I was walking across. (They may not have been plums. The fruit had started to decompose enough that it was hard to tell.)
I stopped there and had my strong aesthetic reaction. It was something like: This should not be. This is obscene. These plums should not be separated from the rest of the living, churning earth.
I don’t contemplate or like nature much, I’m not a spiritual person, and I don’t have enough of a sacredness instinct that ‘desecrated’ is a word I’m moved to use. But here I was, caught in a strong private revolt against the fact that these plums would dangle in their little prison-universe of decay unless someone (when? why?) took the bag down and worked it open.
I was suddenly aware of the rest of the world, which had a kind of porosity and motion that was Right in comparison. It was ugly to have severed the plums from that world when they should rightfully be rejoining it.