August 17, 2023
Robert Adams proclaims, "It is the responsibility of artists to pay attention to the world, pleasant or otherwise, and to help us live respectfully in it."
Which is great and all but how the fuck are assholes from the MFA programs in the blue urban centers going to tell you how to live with respect?
I am not good at baseball and I cannot imagine being able to tell you anything about how to play the game well. If I don't embody an ideal, how the hell am I going to be one to help others achieve that ideal?
So, a bunch of twenty-somethings who have spent a lot of time navel gazing and imbibing copious amount of drugs, alcohol, and bodily fluids are going to tell the rest of us peasants how to live respectfully in this godforsaken wasteland of excess and hedonism?
Right. I didn't realize art schools were hawking fairytales but I guess that's how they justify charging the equivalent of a dragon's hoard and promise fame and fortune if you let them mold you as they will.
The artist of the contemporary age, the year of our Lord 2023, pays attention to memes and TikToks with an eye towards personal brand management. They can help us live out an identity that is as unique as a unicorn and better than the next asshole's personal brand.
Art today helps us commodify our thoughts, conversations, and personal memories all so that they can be packaged to sell for those who want to catch them all like mythical beasts from Japan. Make yourself into something more interesting than a Pikachu or Charizard or some shit like that. Be a Clefairy because everyone wonders what it would be like to fuck one in the ass.
Artists saw Barbara Kruger and responded, "I sell, therefore, I am." They all wanna be Beyonce's with all the self-righteousness of a billionaire pop icon and none of the cash. They waste it on inspirational aspirations meant to manifest their potential while the credit card debt certainly attests to their high degree of responsibility.
One of these assholes that is going to help you live respectfully in the world made a poster that just says, "One day you will wake up and Trump will be gone." But once he is, your painting will remind me of him. Your painting made him immortal. You schmuck. If all I wanted to do was forget him why the fuck would I want that thing hanging on my wall?
I am sure it will help me responsibly go forth and make the world a better place.
It will give me hope for the day when men I hate are dead. Now that is some biblical shit I suppose. Lord listen to my cries as I light a candle before this oil soaked rag I call a painting. Please smite the people I don't like, after all Jerry Saltz doesn't like them either.
That's some king David hiding in a cave hoping God would smite his enemies because you know, he was better than them, type shit. Were the Psalmists trying to get us to live more respectfully in the world or were they hoping God would help them earn some respect? Big ups from the OG(od) is some real influencer rizz.
Let's be a little more realistic. It's not the responsibility of the artist to help you live respectfully in the world. Or if it is, we're fucked. It's your responsibility to figure out that part, you degenerate welp. We can hope that artists might help us in that regard but maybe we should look to some fellas who are a bit more humble than these assholes who might as well be serving up paintings and sculptures that are just their own John Hancock.
I think you might be better off staring out a window then going to a contemporary art gallery. Art can help a little bit but you have to look at it first of all. It won't help much if it forces itself on you like a bit of spittle flying from an activist's mouth straight into your retina.
Let's all hope for a day when artists stop making ideological propaganda worse than 1990's evangelical pamphlets and calling them paintings. Art could be telling me something I don't know, not a regurgitated message from the MSM in oil on linen.