Dear Art Guru: I got in a fight with my girlfriend over the old cliché of life imitating art, or vice versa. She says art imitates life, like how M*A*S*H* is based on the real Korean War. I said life imitates art, like the fact that she’s a nurse probably comes from her watching so damn much M*A*S*H* as a kid. Which side are you on?

Dear Mr. Kirk:

First, your girlfriend’s chosen profession is not an example of life imitating art, but one of life imitating television. Making the claim that television sitcom is not art smacks of fine art elitism, to be sure, but this position is easier to defend when one recalls that Alan Alda was “creative consultant,” if not full director, of many M*A*S*H* episodes. Both you and your girlfriend undermine your own respective cases by employing such an example.

A better example of your girlfriend’s point of view surfaced within the recent Charles Ray exhibit at Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), specifically his piece “Unpainted Sculpture,” an amazing fiberglass reconstruction of a Pontiac Grand Am, which was demolished in a collision. Of the piece, MoCA writes, “Ray spent months visiting insurance lots to find the perfect ‘platonic car wreck’ that avoided the narrative connotations of Edward Kienholz’s and Andy Warhol’s investigations of similar subject matter…”

Still, at its simplest, this is art imitating life: A brilliantly realistic image of its subject matter, much like the work of past masters in representational painting. “Unpainted Scupture” is also a shrine to the woman slain in the original Grand Am’s accident, if not as directly memorial as the hand-carved, truck- and car-themed Ghanaian coffins of Paa Joe. (In Ghana , people often wish to be buried in caskets that literally represent their professions.) Nor is “Unpainted Sculpture” as directly shrine-like as the "Confessional," a Yugo car meticulously transformed into an ornate Catholic confessional booth by a Manhattan School of Visual Arts student for the 1995 exhibit “Yugo Next.” Still, Ray’s work poignantly illustrates the dangers of modern transportation.

Now for an example of life imitating art. Upon seeing Ray’s “Unpainted Sculpture” at MoCA, I personally was moved, however unconsciously, to sculpt my own piece, “Unheralded Sculpture.” Utilizing a 1992 Toyota pickup, I allowed myself to be sideswiped by a poorly piloted 1998 Volvo S90. The results, though mostly underappreciated by public, media, and several law enforcement officials, may not contain the initial visual impact of Ray’s well-crafted piece, but they arguably communicate more, and do so with less. In short, minimalism (no pun intended).

Said one critic, who wishes to remain anonymous, “The slightly bent wheelwell corner sets subtly askew the viewer’s equilibrium; in fact, one scarcely notices the dent at all—consciously. Instead, the evocative power of ‘Unheralded Sculpture’ rests largely within the rust—rust spreading under paint chips, weakening the bodywork, and in so doing conveys flawlessly the universal concept of entropy, that all things are eventually reduced to their smallest components. As coda, the artist added an ill-fitting chunk of inexpensive chrome covering to the well’s arc—a tragic communiqué on the futility of human attempts to stem the flow of time, and inevitable decay; since the chrome cannot contain the rust, the very seed of our destruction, ‘Unheralded Sculpture’ becomes a work in progress—and the progress is, ironically, the sculpture’s own eventual demise.”

Other than references to the chrome covering as “ill-fitting” and “inexpensive,” I find little with which to argue in this assessment. And that MoCA itself refuses to return my calls asking for an exhibit of my own is a puzzle for others to ponder. While I ended up with an arguably superior work to Ray’s (and mine still drives), I realize the irrelevance of this to Mr. Kirk’s original question—does life imitate art, or vice versa. The answer is both. Ray, seeking to craft a representational image from a real-life event, and myself, seeking to craft a real life event from Ray’s representational image; art imitating life, life imitating art.

Simple—simple enough for Frank Burns, even.