Artsy Fartsy

Modern Art is a cop-out. Let’s be clear here, though. I don’t mean “art in modern times”. I mean a style of art called “modern” or “conceptual”. Back in the long long ago, art required skill. Now, anyone can vomit on some canvas and call it “art.”

Let me take a step back. At some point, we as a society decided that passion was more important than talent. It didn’t matter how good you were at something, all that mattered was how much you wanted to do that thing. I’m passionate about history. I love reading about it, I love learning about it. I love watching movies or TV that take place in historical periods. I’m not a historian. I don’t claim to be.

This can be coupled with the narcissistic egotism that has permeated our culture over the last few decades. The “Participation Trophy Phenomenon”, where everyone gets an award, not just the best players. This led to an attitude of entitlement, and I could really spend an entire rant just on that.

The Google definition of art is:

art   ärt/

noun

the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.

Art usually conveys emotion or is elegant. It requires creativity and skill. If you look at art from the Enlightenment, you can see paintings and statues that clearly conveyed the image they were portraying. You saw a painting of angels, and knew it was a painting of angels. You didn’t have to dissect it to get to a deeper understanding of the message the artist was sending.

But what if you don’t have the skill to paint? What if you can come up with ideas, but lack the talent? What if you don’t even have the creativity, but want to be a pretentious asshole?

Enter modern art. Sure, Picaso steered clear from the norm, but I think the pompous attitude started with Andy Warhol, who was a prime example of useless. His most famous “piece” was a picture of a soup can. That or pictures of celebrities with different colors. You know what he added to the art world? Screen printing and a fuckton of elitism. He was a hack. He had no actual talent. No actual creativity. But he and his fans hid it with buzzwords and vagueries, and made you feel stupid if you didn’t “get it”. He tried to add meaning when there wasn’t any. People called him a genius. Why? I mean, seriously. Why? Am I to believe that he was truly the Eisenstein of the art world? Because I don’t and he wasn’t.

When I was in art school, we had a class that was dedicated to this bullshit. Each of us would find or create a piece and then discuss it. Most of the class was the discussion part, and it was the easiest and most unnecessary class I’ve ever had. You could take a black and white photo of a stapler, and come up with some nonsense about how the staples represented our human interaction with others and how a simple action like a hand shake could bind us together as a species, just like a small staple can bind paper together. Easy A.

Except it’s meaningless. It’s a picture of a fucking stapler. An office supply. That thing that made Stephen Root’s character from Office Space burn the building down. This isn’t art. A few years ago, I saw a piece where someone had taken a sink cut from a counter top, hung it, and gave it a placard. It’s formica. It’s not art. Nothing was painted on it. It had no deeper meaning. It didn’t convey emotion (other than rage, but that’s just me). Someone remodeled their kitchen, threw away the part of the counter where the sink would go, and someone else grabbed that trash and put it on a wall. This is not art.

Is it really too much to ask that we stop acting like this takes some great feat of imagination? You constantly see this random junk in art exhibits now. Look at this picture. That’s it. They bought some canvases, and put them up on a wall. I wonder if they even bothered to paint the white canvas white. I’m sure it conveys the tedium of life in the 21st century or how the white man has dominated and decimated humanity or something. You know what else could convey that? A FUCKING PAINTING OF IT. What? Are Africans too hard to paint? If they had done a painting of whitey showing up in West Africa leading a bunch of Africans onto a boat in shackles, that could have conveyed the emotion and been visually appealing. Well, as appealing as the subject matter could be. But that would require talent, and that’s something modern art is very much against.

What about this clustfuckery? This is a giant sculpture here in Seattle. At least this required some talent to put together, and it actually looks like something. But does it mean anything? Does it symbolize our growing dependency on the material, while we abandon our sense of community in a world drowning in tribal us vs them mentality? Or is it the wheel of a giant shopping cart that ran away?

I can’t take this nonsense anymore. I have a lot of friends in the art community. Well, like two. And I haven’t really asked their opinion on this, but they are really talented. I wonder if they find it as aggravating as I do. To see someone throw paint at a wall, and for it to make more money than they will in a year.

And believe me, this stuff makes bank. The success of this style is all caused by a group of rich people who have more money than sense. They buy this ridiculous “art”, so they can brag to their rich friends about how much they spent on it, or how unique it is, or how it makes them feel like their genitals are bigger. Then their rich friends buy an equally ludicrous thing to compete, and the circle jerk continues. I’m sure there was an artist who painted something, but messed it up, got frustrated, and threw the paint can at it. Then before he could paint over it, some idiot saw it, and offered him an obscene amount of money for it. So the artist figured, “why bother putting effort into it, when I can just throw my paint cans at it”. Thus was this movement born.

Then comes the “expression” argument. “They are just expressing themselves,” blah blah blah. Look, I get it. This entire website is dedicated to me complaining about stupid stuff and publicly shaming my parents. But I don’t consider this an art form. I’ve never asked someone to repost any of my rants. I’ve not tried to gain fame from this. I don’t have ads on here, so I don’t make any money. I spend $100 a year to have a digital journal. This is expression. You don’t have to use a decoder ring to figure out what I’m trying to say. Unless I miss a typo, which I often do. If you can’t express yourself clearly, then whatever you are trying to express isn’t important. I’m sure my cat has the cure for cancer, but she can’t explain it to me, so it’s useless. Let’s stop glorifying these people.

Art has a purpose. Many, in fact. Sometimes they are a serene setting, and for a few minutes, you actually imagine being in that forest or on that beach. Maybe you are shocked at how detailed that portrait is. Perhaps you leave an exhibit feeling exhilarated and excited and full of inspiration. There is a spectrum of talent, though, and let’s not pretend that the concept or the idea is more important than the actual skill. Let’s not pretend that dripped paint is even in the same realm as Van Gogh or Monet.