There is no saving for the art world

STORY ISU PARK

ILLUSTRATION ELLA MIZOTA-WANG

Most people have the perception that the art world is pretentious, selfish, and lonely. I would say reasonably so; art, especially writing, is subjecting other people to whatever product resulted from indulging yourself for hours before asking for advice and money in return.

Regardless, as a child, I always enjoyed creative pastimes. My parents are both artists, so my sisters and I grew up surrounded by resources that pushed us towards expressive, unconventional pathways. But entering adulthood, as it has done for most of us, has made it more difficult to genuinely care about “impractical” things. Writing for the mere fun of it, or painting or singing or dancing, has become less attainable.

I have struggled with this idea for a while now, especially as a senior, and now that talk of the future, college, and career make up my every day. I knew that out of the fields I grew familiar with, I would want to pursue writing of some form. Journalism caught my eye because perhaps through this field I could maneuver around the corruption that comes with growing up and maybe sustain something more noble.

Muckrakers and zine collectives, among other radical groups, empower truth and progress. Though as much as I would love to believe this, everything, journalism included, is a victim of time and postmodern aggression. As for the art world, postmodernism intends to reject art for its aesthetic purpose. It is a purely reactionary principle, due to its preceding movements that coincided with minimalism and propaganda. Simply put, it confronts the idea that anything can be art, so art is essentially meaningless.

A good example of this can be accredited to Italian artist Piero Manzoni. In 1961, in the height of the conceptual period, Manzoni created a commentary piece by canning his own waste and labeling it Merda d’artista, or “100% pure artist’s sh*t”, to address subjectivity in artistic value. This type of art, the “anti-art” phenomenon, confronts creativity as an institution and opposes the notion that art has to be beautiful and romanticized. What is unique about anti-art in specific is that as technology, politics, and social eras progress, art becomes more complicated. Such movements pose heavy realizations; time counters the genuinity of pursuing anything creative. It seems that art can only progress towards its own self-annihilation. “Saving” the art world, in the simplest terms, has an irritably obvious solution; future artists just have to preserve whatever blithe innocence inspired them to create in the first place. That one, authentic emotion is the backbone of anti-tradition and all things creative. It is easier said than done. Postmodernist theory and any passage of time exists alongside the production of repetitive products. Ideas are no longer new, and even if they are, they often just test existing ones or restate forgotten ones.

That is why wanting to pursue something artistic is becoming more and more of a daunting task; not just because it might be risky, but because creativity is contaminated by elitism and crass marketing. Being a writer is a job, and work, with all of its factors and implications, leaves minimal room for real passion.

Time has progressed past a point where even conceptualism is unrevolutionary – where even Manzoni’s efforts are considered mundane.

I am only 17, and I am already forgetting the enthusiasm I once had for art and writing as a child. Competition and comparison makes it harder to be proud of what I produce, so I tend to leave things unfinished.