Wow, it's been almost a whole year since my last blog!!! Oh my god that is horrible! I'm so sorry. Let's just get into today's tangent-
I'm very sad today and have been ruminating on "modern art" and the conversation around it- and to put it briefly, I'm insanely frustrated. Not by squares or toilets, minimalism or any of the actual art, but what people are saying. Everything ends up boiling down to the argument of subjectivity in art, and the whole "anything can be art" thing. Over time I've realized it is the most useless conversation ever.
There's really two things I'm always hearing. On one side, I hear people advocate for the absence of standards: "Oh, this is meant to question the status quo of art!" or "It's open to interpretation" or some other justification for it. On the other side all I constantly hear is "Wow this is not art, this is stupid" and "Art is dying, we're losing all of our values and taste!" and oh my god I fucking hate all of it. Let's look first into the issue with Bad Modern Art.
It is actually a cool idea to do something absurd or wholly minimalistic, but there's only so many times you can strip everything back and criticize everything before that gets old. This genre of art has completely lost all of its impact. But the isolated concept gives it the eternal illusion of intelligent criticism, of freedom. But the idea is so tired, most art like that is made that way because there is no care or consideration for the craft, it's just another product of art's commercialization. It's the same reason those NFT monkeys were auto-generated by computers: it's easy to manufacture. In most cases, minimal art means minimal investment. So even though it is completely useless at expressing anything humans can recognize (AKA the purpose of art) it's monetary value is contrived to be some bloated number for wealthy people to leverage their finances with. So, bad modern art bad then, right? Well the response to this is just as stupid.
Every time I hear people complain about bad modern art, they all give off the same energy as an SJW cringe compilation. It's mostly just outrage at something that is completely not worth talking about. "What happened to real art?! This new generation has no taste or cultural values!" They'll be all like "Look here, this is REAL art" and then show an image of something classical or very eurocentrically conventionally "artistic" like a portrait or landscape or detailed sculpture. But the problem is that even our "objective standards" for art are also subjective. Our standards are biased. They're born from the cultures that made them, affected by all their idealizations, history and flaws. When you look into what traditional objectivists in America consider Fine Art you'll find a concerning amount of whiteness. The art and design principles of non-white cultures are often dismissed, or just completely ignored. There's no experimentation or diversity in those samplings.
Both sides of this argument are hugely flawed and entirely pointless. Subjectivists indulge in an esoteric facade of "freedom" of creativity which completely disregards the purpose of artistic expression, and objectivists hold this traditionalist, rigid and fascist-adjacent mindset, holding their own cultural standards a some kind of law. Both sides of this argument are wrong, and there is no possible right side, this whole conversation just sucks.
We should all stop talking about what is and isn't art. It's an impossible conversation that will never ever end. Instead we should remember why art even exists: to express humanity. Human experiences, ideas, feelings, sights sounds smells stories fantasies, anything that holds meaning to us. If nothing is being expressed, it could still technically be Art, but it's quite useless at being art. Like yeah, it's art but it's just... there. Yet, I despise the outrage against this type of Bad Modern Art because it focuses attention to it, which makes that useless art take more prominence in our minds and eyes. They just want something to be outraged against, something to feel righteous about. We should instead focus on the art that gives us feeling, that expresses the things we hold interest in. That could be in any kind of style or expression. Whether it's art or not, good or bad, is subjective, but we should really consider when something is just not worth talking about.
One of my many many resolutions this year is to write more blogs. I really like it, actually! More to come soon, I promise. Happy 2023!