Art Lost: The Tragic Farce of Pretension
Art — it’s as old as human history, and it’s as universal as the air we breathe. Yet, somewhere along the line, Western society managed to muddle up its essence, trading authenticity for affectation, and craft for craftiness. We’ve swapped the visceral connection of shared human experience that art symbolises in traditional societies for abstract theories and convoluted narratives.
In traditional societies, you see, art is intertwined with daily life. It’s about marking milestones, honouring the sacred, and celebrating the collective. But step into the contemporary Western art scene, and you’re likely to find something rather different: an elaborate play of words and ideas, where the artist seems to be weaving tales around simplistic creations in a bid to grant them legitimacy. It’s as if we’ve prioritised the story behind the artwork over the artwork itself, an act of pretentiousness that has given birth to a deluge of vacuous, self-absorbed pieces that are more likely to alienate the audience than engage them.
But the woes don’t end there, if it is not the conceptual then it's the stifling sameness plaguing our galleries and museums. It’s as if the entire art scene is stuck on repeat: another landscape painting, another sketch of a dancer. Artists are entitled to create as they wish, but to believe that their fifty-first painting of a sunset somehow constitutes an earth-shattering contribution to society is simply delusional.
In the midst of this sea of mediocrity and repetitiveness, you find the professional artists: creatures cocooned in their studios, shielded from the humdrum of ordinary life. Most often individuals who’ve managed to sidestep the rough and tumble of ordinary life. Unburdened by nine-to-five jobs, they dwell in a cocoon of comfort, either facilitated by a privileged background or societal handouts from ordinary people’s sweat. This seclusion, while offering abundant time to practice their craft, paradoxically deprives them of the genuine life experiences that feed authentic art.
These artists have fallen in love with the romantic notion of being an ‘artist’, completely disconnecting themselves from the realities of the common man. Their lives, cushioned from the trials and tribulations that shape human existence, lack the rich — and the ordinary — experiences that inspire authentic art. Art is a reflection of life, and without truly living, without experiencing the hustle and bustle, the heartbreaks and jubilations, the monotonous grind, their art ends up shallow, devoid of the deep resonance of that found in traditional societies.
In such societies, art is the byproduct of living itself, reflecting the ebbs and flows of everyday life. But, detached from such authenticity, our modern ‘artists’ operate within their bubble of self-importance, often conflating time spent creating art with creating valuable art. They believe their work to be of paramount importance, when in reality, if they were to vanish tomorrow, most people wouldn’t even notice.
This is not to say that art requires suffering or hardship, but rather, it demands an authentic connection to life, something which our modern artist class seems to be missing. They’ve distanced themselves from the everyday world to such an extent that their work often fails to resonate on a deeper, human level.
And let’s not forget the wealthy patrons of this picture, awash with an abundance of time and money. In their pursuit for novelty, they assemble a haphazard collection of vacuous conceptual art and ‘ethnic’ artefacts, turning their homes into personal Xanadus. Their vast array of Buddhist statues, tribal woodwork, and other pieces from distant cultures reflects a perverse fetishisation of the ‘exotic’. Unbeknownst to them, they only underscore their ignorance and hypocrisy, as they simultaneously contribute to the dilution and decline of their own Western art.
So we see, the self-indulgent artists and their wealthy patrons have cunningly formed a symbiotic relationship to sustain their existence in a world insulated from the common man’s realities. The former, in their quest for an identity and the latter, in their pursuit of novelty and cultural capital, have jointly engineered the art world into its current, distorted form. In the process, they have not only alienated art from the everyday experiences of most people but also created a self-perpetuating cycle that feeds and justifies their vacuous lifestyles and worldviews.
These artists, consumed by their self-importance and detached from the essence of life, churn out shallow, unskilled and/or repetitive works, while their patrons, in their obsession with the exotic and novel, fuel this machine with their financial resources and misplaced enthusiasm. Together, they have morphed Western art into an exclusive club that only caters to the collective boredom and wealth of those with such luxuries.
Frankly, I’m sick of the whole charade and I won’t pretend professional artists aren’t, for the most part, just indulged children who never grew up. Western art, in its current form, is simply boring. Only when we return it to its rightful place — as a mirror to our society, as a commentary on our times, as a celebration of our shared human experience and technical proficiency — will it regain its vibrancy, its relevance, and its soul. And then, and only then, will it cease to be the exclusive plaything of the bored, the feckless, and the rich.
