Why Art Let Has Me Down

Since the rise of individualism, art has gotten more and more selfish.

Used to be, an artist created in order to uplift man by depicting a moral story, a heroic message, or a religious theme. Even landscapes and still lifes were rich with messages.

Then with the impressionist movement, individual perspectives and the study of light and color became dominant. But at least, they were working with a unified theory of art and aesthetics.

Nowadays, it is all the individual and how that individual artist is feeling. Shock for shock’s sake and great blobs of art representing the petulant fits of an artist too self-absorbed to think about how he is depicting him or herself.

The petty shoddiness of it all. The sophomoric attempts at originality by being ugly or obscene. That no matter how “cutting-edge” the art is supposed to be, so much seems to be tawdrily about sex. And the more vulgar the sex or sexual display, the better.

How boring. How tedious. How predictable.

And how ridiculous.

An artist’s bad mood smeared on a canvas or fired from a lump of clay is now art. Van Gogh cut off his own ear but you never saw it stapled to a canvas. That’s what made his self-portrait so haunting, you say his coherent worldview in his art and only a glimpse of his inner turmoil. But when you saw that glimpse it was more evocative than any crucifix in urine could ever be.

And how dumb does the modern artist or gallery owner think we are? Paint splashed across a canvas in drizzles and drops may have been original the first time. But only the first time. I always get the impression when I see a Jackson Pollack that he just had this idea one day and when he showed it to the gallery owner, the following response took place:

JP: What do you think?

GO: It’s just paint splatter. How am I going to sell this?

JP: Ummm

GO: I mean it looks okay but it doesn’t say anything.

JP: Ummmm, how about…

GO: Ok, it says movement.

JP: Yeah, yeah, that’s what I meant. I’m trying to convey the chaotic movement of life though time with color and ….

GO: Yeah, yeah, let’s just say it’s a study of movement.

It’s paint splatter. It looks okay once or twice but there is a reason that it is in a museum instead of someone’s home.