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All this is a way of saying that Owen thinks for himself.  Having established that the expert consensus may not be the end all, it is clear that there are many paintings that appeared to be very significant to the experts many years ago and still seem significant today.  Perhaps Sister Wendy said it best, (as discussed in TAHOE BLOWUP) that "Great art is what draws you back again and again."

What about the art discussed in the books?

In TAHOE DEATHFALL, Edward Hopper's New York Movie is used to show how Owen can look into a painting about isolation (at least in Owen's opinion) and draw insights into his own life and the lives of the other characters he encounters in his case. That Owen feels a kind of attraction to the woman in the theater adds another layer to how art works. Is he nuts to feel drawn to a fictional character made of paint on canvas? Or does that show the power of art, that we can be pulled into it in many ways, both intellectual and emotional?

In TAHOE BLOWUP, Owen studies Albert Bierstadt's The Sierra Nevada In California. He sees the painting as an essay on the sacredness of the natural world prior to man's interference. The painting is larger than life, more fantastic than the real Sierra, and that is no doubt what Bierstadt intended. The lesson Owen draws from the painting is that we should proceed with the greatest of care when we trample over the natural landscape. The painting illustrates the natural beauty that is lost whether we are merely interfering in natural processes such as putting out lightning-caused forest fires, or building another Walmart and literally "paving paradise," as Joni Mitchell wrote about in her famous song.

In TAHOE ICE GRAVE, Owen moves into the area of 3-dimensional art. Street has given Owen two small replicas of famous sculptures. One is a bronze of Rodin's Eternal Spring. The other is one of Calder's famous mobiles. Owen is struck by the contrasting nature of the two pieces. 

The Calder is fanciful, playful and full of movement. It is also an abstract piece with no obvious representation of anything in the real world. As such, Owen sees it as being a statement about balance and harmony. The engineering of pretty shapes becomes, for Owen, what the sculpture is all about. 

The Rodin, on the other hand, seems in many ways to be the opposite of the Calder. Not playful or fanciful at all, Eternal Spring is an earnest and very serious depiction of emotion, and Owen is drawn to the power of the passion between the two young lovers. Owen also sees that passion as being diametrically opposed to the "engineering" aspects of the Calder. To him, they are like a yin and yang of art. Balance and Passion. 

I should add a comment here about the way different people see art and think about it. Owen's view of art and the art world is just one of an infinite number of views. Yet he, like many of us, is influenced by what others think, especially the opinions of the "experts." For example, near the beginning of TAHOE ICE GRAVE, Owen thinks about how he initially was uncomfortable with Rodin's work. The work is unabashedly earnest and even sentimental, qualities that many serious art critics take a pejorative view of. (Although most critics have much respect for Rodin and his work.) But over time, Owen comes to realize that if he ignores what some of the experts think, he has no reservations about the work at all and simply enjoys it for what it is.

In TAHOE KILLSHOT, Owen has been looking at, and thinking about, Joseph William Turner's Snowstorm painting. The full title is "Snowstorm-steamboat off a harbour's mouth making signals in shallow water and going by lead." The painting hangs in the Tate Gallery in London. Unveiled in 1842, the painting was a sensation. Almost abstract, it amazed viewers of the day with its portrayal of the awesome power and fury of a blizzard on the ocean.

While art scholars then and now consider a hundred metaphors that the painting provides, even going so far as to find complex statements on the burgeoning industrial revolution, Owen simply enjoys the depiction of light and movement. When Owen starts to think about other meanings the painting may offer, his girlfriend Street Casey stops that line of thinking. She mentions Susan Sontag's essay Against Interpretation, which suggests that we would do better to just look at art for what it plainly shows us rather than trying to find deeper meaning.

The moral is that people should enjoy art in whatever way they want. To study it and learn about it in an academic way is wonderful. But never let peer pressure or comments by experts tell you what not to like. Experts are incredibly important and useful in all fields. But in the arts especially, history has shown that the next generation of experts may well embrace what the preceding experts dismissed.  A famous example is when Alfred Stieglitz brought to his gallery Picasso's first show in the United States. Stieglitz then introduced the work to the head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, perhaps the most important art museum in the world. The man took a look at Picasso's work and dismissed it entirely. He could have bought the entire collection of paintings for approximately $25,000, but instead thought it insignificant. This was, at least financially if not in all ways, one of the most astonishing oversights in the history of art.

Incidentally, this does not just apply to the visual arts. It has happened with novelists, classical composers, songwriters, poets, choreographers, musicians. Go to any university and you'll find humanities instructors giving serious discussion to artists of all fields who were considered insignificant in their time and in some cases were even thought of as hacks.

I should add one more comment on this subject. If any of you readers are wondering if I'm applying some of the foregoing thoughts to my own writing, let me reassure you that I am not. I have no desire to be thought of as a significant writer. Further, I don't even consider myself an artist. I am merely a craftsman, arranging words in an effort to entertain. When I'm long gone, I'm certain my books will be long gone as well and that is fine with me. Why do I do it, spend long hours writing novels when I could be out skiing or hiking? The answer has nothing to do with grand aspirations. In fact, the answer is very mundane. It is fun! I get to conjure up all sorts of nastiness and then have Owen and Spot and Street go in and straighten it out! Novelists get to create their own little world and make that world as fair and just and exciting as they want. What could be more fun than that?!