The Art World Market Vs Everything Else In The Arts

So lately I've become not so much jaded towards the idea of art or creativity, but the art market's insistence on a lot of glamour with not a lot of substance.

I can think of a few things that caused this outlook on my creative future. One was reading The Map And The Territory by Michel Houllebeuq which is about the art world market but somehow crams in all that good stuff about the decline of Europe as a culturally influential power, the fluctuating stock market of aesthetics in both Hollywood and High Art, but I could probably point to the excellent Vice Magazine article series "I Don't Get Art" which was a selection of articles where a guy went out to explore what was happening in capital A Contemporary Art. What he found was rather disappointing, at least to him.

To be honest I've been thinking on this a while, and when I do start thinking about a topic for this long, Tumblr postings become more lengthy and frequent. I find that a lot of the time, popular arts like paperback/eBook novels for literature, film, photography, TV and animation representing mass produced visual culture, and music C Ds/iTunes for music, are a lot more interesting to me aesthetically than what's been going on in the art world lately.

The IKEA scene in (500) Days Of Summer deserves a chapter in a thesis somewhere all by itself, since it's a perfect storm of both product placement, quirky 2000s era indie comedy and a disturbing commentary on modern relationships through the lens of an IKEA visit all at the same time. Likewise, I could point to something like AKIRA as a highlight of Japanese Superflat and anime fused together at the pinnacle of Japanese theatrical animation's popularity in the West. Hell, both the book and film of Wake In Fright are deep sociological studies in the Australian character not often seen in other places or researched effectively in other media.

What I'm getting at here is, popular art isn't just more accessible to me because I'm a philistine idiot, which probably isn't the case, but popular art does the tightrope act of being both meaningful and cheap to reproduce so average blokes like me can go out and buy it. Popular art covers a lot of issues to do with the non-ruling classes, which is the target audience of popular art instead of say, the ruling crowned heads of Europe. It's a lot easier to make something you can reproduce and sell for a small amount of money to lots of people and make it accessible/non elitist rather than charge millions of dollars for a painting that might not be as good as paintings made hundreds of years prior. And by that I mean bloody minimalist blob art that seems to be all the rage these days in galleries.

As an art school student I don't think it's unfair for me to say I've found a much wider audience through my Vimeo page where my student works were given away for free than I would have trying to sell it to a gallery where they'd stick a copyright on it and limit its release. I think I'm a better street photographer than a fashion photographer, but I never liked fashion much anyway. I write entire novels in my bedroom that attempt to bring to light large and complex ideas in ways average people can grasp and at a price they could probably afford now that eBooks are a thing.

What say you, TV Tropes, proclaimed Wiki of the popular arts? Am I wrong, or in the right?

Hell Hasn't Earned My Tears

Wasn't the blobby minimalist stuff like a decade or so ago? :o

Not even sure what the current movement is. :/

Also is there really much of a definite divide between pop-art (not the warhol stuff, popular media sillies) and the "art world"?

edited 30th Jan '13 12:51:49 AM by Zersk

ᐅᖃᐅᓯᖅ ᐊᑕᐅᓯᖅ ᓈᒻᒪᔪᐃᑦᑐᖅ

See, I'm one of those overly open-minded people who sees literally everything as art, so I think if I were to expound upon my philosophy here then the more serious artsy people would probably get on my case about it or start getting headaches (but then smoke a joint to relax themselves and forget about it).

Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.

Can't we just all get along? :<

ᐅᖃᐅᓯᖅ ᐊᑕᐅᓯᖅ ᓈᒻᒪᔪᐃᑦᑐᖅ

Reading Retromania by Simon Reynolds as well, this book is a source code for the complaints/counter complaints about stagnation in the arts, particularly music.

I'd argue that my tendency to hunt down obscure Western Animation/Anime DV Ds and Blu Rays is because I regard 2D animation as an artform I will never be able to have a career in but I love the magic of it, like it's the last form of true magic mankind has left, and it's made by wizards. I also love grunge era Gen X stuff on MTV like Daria and Aeon Flux, the Tank Girl comic and stuff like AKIRA and Repo Man from back in the days when you saw a cool character on screen or on a page and you knew they were cool because being cool back in the 80s and 90s actually MEANT something, leather jackets and army boots, you probably had to smoke unironically, being cool meant a lot more than it does now.

I also collect photography books by people like Daido Moriyama who's a great street photographer and so unpretentious in what he does, that he inspires you rather than shuts you out.

Hell Hasn't Earned My Tears

We're thinking of the same art period here, right? :p

ᐅᖃᐅᓯᖅ ᐊᑕᐅᓯᖅ ᓈᒻᒪᔪᐃᑦᑐᖅ

Cool people nowadays suck, they have no idea how to pull off a Badass Biker jacket or even a decent B-Boy stance. Now it's just ironic flannel and more ironic t-shirts. Yes, I am hip with the kids... I swear!

Hell Hasn't Earned My Tears

You know people in a decade or two from now are going to say the same thing, only about this generation and the next. :3

ᐅᖃᐅᓯᖅ ᐊᑕᐅᓯᖅ ᓈᒻᒪᔪᐃᑦᑐᖅ

Guys, Imma let you finish, but the Fonz is the epitome of cool. No one's done it better since!

Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.

The art world market vs. everything else in the arts, huh? More like the art world market vs. everything else in your MOM!

Mache dich, mein Herze, rein...

Your Mom jokes are an artform that have been in serious decline since 1993, which I heard after which was the first decline in American pop culture from a Basketball Video Games article I read once.

Hell Hasn't Earned My Tears

That last clause doesn't parse. :o

ᐅᖃᐅᓯᖅ ᐊᑕᐅᓯᖅ ᓈᒻᒪᔪᐃᑦᑐᖅ

I'll parse your clause in a minute!

Hell Hasn't Earned My Tears

No not Santa! D:

ᐅᖃᐅᓯᖅ ᐊᑕᐅᓯᖅ ᓈᒻᒪᔪᐃᑦᑐᖅ

Time for the Escape Claus[e]!

Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.

To get this back on track, I was kicked out of my brother's room because I told him I'd been busy all day being a visionary.

It's hard work being a visionary if nobody listens to you if you're not famous yet.

Is it pretentious to say I'm a visionary if I've written complete drafts of novels before and continue to do so?

Hell Hasn't Earned My Tears

Well have you published any drafts? :o Or at least got them edited?

I'm pretty sure a visionary involves a bit more than just thinking those things. Like it also involves making them happen (where doing this man).

EDIT: At least in the sense I think you're using it?

edited 31st Jan '13 12:38:37 AM by Zersk

ᐅᖃᐅᓯᖅ ᐊᑕᐅᓯᖅ ᓈᒻᒪᔪᐃᑦᑐᖅ

I also made this film, if it helps.

https://vimeo.com/53200544

So yeah, I've publicly exhibited that. I also publicly exhibited these:

https://vimeo.com/30911116

https://vimeo.com/37891966

Oh, and there was that time I spliced Cannibal Holocaust footage into actual police brutality footage of protesters on my University campus getting beaten up by cops:

https://vimeo.com/49954712

I don't know if this qualifies me for Visionary Status but from the people who actually watched my work they found it very compelling. One person on Twitter said the Vanilla Ice one was "Weirder than parodies of art films".

EDIT: A recurring theme with my video art work is this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuQNt45Cjkc

edited 31st Jan '13 2:21:40 AM by NewGeekPhilosopher

Hell Hasn't Earned My Tears

I dunno. :3 But why the need to worry about yourself being such? :o

ᐅᖃᐅᓯᖅ ᐊᑕᐅᓯᖅ ᓈᒻᒪᔪᐃᑦᑐᖅ

Ever since I started posting on forums I felt like I had to achieve human worth.

Maybe it was that creepy Japanese dude on the I-Mockery.com boards who threatened to letter bomb my house and stalked me back to my anime blog when I left, maybe it was the people on Spoony's boards who thought I was overly whiney and laughed at me because I hadn't figured out greatest hits albums were for losers yet. But all my life I felt like I had to earn people's respect/love, so I thought the best way to do that was to write a bunch of books and make controversial art that people would talk about and they'd say "Hey, I heard the new (NGP) book is out, he's quite the cheeky monkey that man". Because if I could make things, I could be a visionary and people would like me.

And I blame the back cover of my old copy of Watchmen for making me fixated on that word. As soon as I figured out Alan Moore was a visionary, I always wanted to be one.

Hell Hasn't Earned My Tears

If people have to prove themselves to be loved, the world is going in the wrong direction.

The issue here isn't art. It's people. The way people are wired, to be specific. It's fine that people don't like different things and can express that: art can mean anything to anyone. The issue is that people care about their own opinion over all other things. No-one cares to respect a differing opinion anymore: everything is either good or bad, no room for judgement or other opinions.

I'm writing this primarily because I hate the kind of people you mentioned: the letter-bomb guy, the guy who thinks a certain thing is just an "easy ticket" to liking something. But it applies to the art world too: Everything has a meaning depending on how the viewer sees it, and if the viewer can't see anything then they shouldn't have to look deeper. There's art out there for everyone, and not all of it has to be accepted and understood. If someone claims you have to look deeper into something to "get it", they are trying to force their viewpoint on someone else, which is not what art is all about.

People are wired differently: You could love a work and I could hate it, the same way I could love an orange and you could hate it. Some people are indifferent and can't really "get" oranges, but that's okay too. Most people will try to force the indifferent guy to see the different sides of the orange when the indifferent guy doesn't really care and wants to eat an apple instead, instead of just just saying "hey dude, it doesn't really matter."

I guess my point is that art is different, and not liking something is a perfectly legitimate choice. But being close-minded and forcing your viewpoint is annoying and really missing the point of art (which to me is interpreting art in your own way).

edited 31st Jan '13 4:37:12 AM by MrMallard

The weird thing is, I based the main villain of the book trilogy I wrote on the letter bomb guy. And I made him Chinese in the book just to piss him off in real life.

Oh, and I'm not pulling a Carly Simon You're So Vain by not naming the guy, I never found out his real name, so even if this becomes a successful series the real guy the villain was based on will die unremembered by history.

I'm brutal as fuck like that. Also one of the ghost characters is a Nazi and he still spits on the letterbomber guy equivalent for being the kind of tool not worthy of waxing his goosestep boots.

And that's not even going into the people who laughed at my audiosensitivity to Flags Of Our Fathers and high functioning ASD on I-Mockery, I watched a whole bunch of stuff The Cinema Snob reviewed to prove that I was a real man/could handle rougher movies/prove them wrong. I have bizarre Batman The Animated Series like grudges with people from the bad old days of internet forums.

edited 31st Jan '13 6:07:07 AM by NewGeekPhilosopher

Hell Hasn't Earned My Tears

I know the feeling, but... well, I've been down that road. If you can make the character hateable without him kicking puppies and stealing children's candy, you're good, but if it's just a lifeless caricature meant to be a direct Take That! at the guy who wronged you in the past, that's... not really healthy.

He's not a puppy kicker but think Oingo Boingo's Only A Lad mixed with internet forums and you get the idea.

He's ripped from the pages of the I-Mockery forums only in the sense he's a Karma Houdini who isn't such a Houdini by the end of the first chapter.

Hell Hasn't Earned My Tears

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it." —CS Lewis

In the same way, I'm convinced that art which truly sticks with people has to be motivated by something more than "Look at me look at me look at me!"