I am known for my controversial art opinions that will often anger self-proclaimed smart people. I am one of those philistines who thinks that, say, if a person dedicates their life to perfecting things like depth, composition, colour, light, perspective and so on, and put this talent into their work, then yes, their art is probably better than if someone simply drinks a carton of cranberry juice and shits all over a tarp.
To say that the masterful painter is more of an artist than someone who shits on a tarp is what postmodernists consider the core defining traits of a fascist.
Some would argue that makes them ridiculous maniacs but apparently they get paid millions to publish these ideas in art magazines.
Even though it seems like a waste of time, they could just shit in the magazines and call it an avant garde perfume sample, save themselves hours in needless labour now that everything is subjective.
Turns out it’s not though, turns out that art isn’t some magical product. Turns out that artists are not magical labourers. Imagine if someone sold you a broken stove that didn’t cook food, and you tried to return it, and some asshole in raybans told you that you’re essentialising the stove, and that the true stove is in the eye of the beholder.
If that did indeed happen then you would be well within your rights to start the key arrangements of a beatnik funeral.
But alas, when it comes to art, then hemlock is just misunderstood vitamins.
Truth is that art, just like anything else, is made with humans for a purpose. Not a singular purpose, it’s kind of like food. Once again: If the chef walked up to you and shat on a tarp, then you would not say “I’m sorry but this is not my personal preference, however I respect your passion and talent.”
No, you’d give him electroshock therapy until he sorted himself out.
Same is true about art. Art does not have a singular purpose, just like food. Point of art is to evoke something. Just like how food has dinner, dessert, fish, roast, whatever, so does art have aesthetics, conveyance, tones, themes, motifs, and so on. Some art is melancholy, some art is happy, some art is good, some art is stupid and pretentious and should be thrown in the trash with the shit-laden tarps of history.
There is successful art, and failed art. Art is not sacred, it is a product that is made by a worker. If a cleaner tips over their mop water they don’t expect the world to fall to their feet and applaud them for participating in the great tradition of mopping, that would be stupid. Artists are no different. If an artist fucks up then they fuck up, simple as. They’re equals like anyone else.
If someone asks them to paint a classical portrait, and the result is something a six year old could do with finger-paints, then they’ve fucked up. You throw away the canvass and try again. Imagine if the accounting department at Enron said “Oh well these numbers are my numbers, and that’s my own personal truth.”
Fucking ridiculous, do your job.
But I have committed a crime here. Because I am treating art like any other labour. Since mass production of art and copyright has become a thing, art is no longer a working class endeavour. Back before TV screens, infinite reproduction, cameras and so on, struggling artists weren’t as common. Because the market wasn’t overly saturated with billions of products that could be copied ad infinitum.
Digital art especially is basically the Zimbabwe dollar of market commodities, it is entirely contradictory to capitalism.
So how does art dealers and capitalists resolve this? Well, it’s simple. Suddenly the art stops being a product, and instead the artist is the product. Suddenly the art world is full of “personalities” and “stories” and “characters.”
In other words: Pretentious weirdoes.
You’re not paying for the art, you’re paying for the signature. There’s a thousand people who aren’t rich and famous with insiders in the industry who are twice as talented and completely unemployable, and this reality is why art suddenly becomes subjective.
Because it’s hard to justify why exactly a bunch of obnoxious divas rake in millions, while people who could outpaint them any day of the week spend their lives being flat broke.
Turns out that when you begin to actually value art, instead of insulting people who devote their entire lives to perfecting their talent by saying that it’s basically no different from the postmodern tarp shitters of the world, then capitalism stops making sense. Suddenly art can no longer be bought and sold. Suddenly you need to ask complicated questions about how cultural development and market forces do not exactly work in perfect harmony.
And that’s when Johnny Fingerpaints, with his low effort million dollar Rorschach tests polluting the big galleries of the world will find himself on his ass.
And I for one cannot wait. Long live the immortal science of Marxism-Leninism.
