I, a self-proclaimed creative, have recently decided that I detest art and poetry.
Aside from its connotations of elitism and exclusion, art can bring joy. It brings the opportunity for quiet reflection, obnoxious laughter, or incurable rage. Most often, in art there is space for all three to merge – just as there is in life. Art mirrors life. Except, that is, for all art that seems to gain any critical acclaim. Because, let’s face it, art is fundamentally exclusive in nature.
The word ‘subversive’ pops up among artists and critics time and time again, and each time without fail, it makes me feel slightly nauseous. Whether this is because of my extreme discomfort around those who try too hard, or my Art-School-Wank ex, is difficult to tell. I think I hate it because, like both of the above, it feels incredibly disingenuous. The word subversive has historically been applied to the suffragettes, civil rights activists, anti-fascists, and LGBTQ+ organisations. To be ‘subversive’ means that you are actively seeking to undermine a fundamentally flawed establishment or institution. How revoltingly vain and arrogant must you be to know this fact, and yet continue to apply the word to your dilapidated ‘sculpture’ of a naked woman made from impacted human shit? Yawn. How predictable. You might truly be a pioneer had you made it a naked man. Or better yet, a fully clothed woman. I digress.
The Art-Wank terms aren’t really what bother me. The crux of the issue is the widely accepted, and indeed enforced, commercialisation of art and poetry. It is taught that your work must sell on a large scale, because in order to be good, you must be profitable. Yet the majority of infamous Art-Wanks spend their lives creating anti-capitalist messages, such as ‘Money is Superstition’ from their multi-million pound houses on Hampstead Heath (a community of reality-refugees, fleeing the terror of living an actual life, to the cushy comfort of mummy London’s breasts.) Unfortunately, Hampstead Heath is the goal for so many artists; the epitome of success is to be awarded someone else’s life to live – a bratty heiress in the 1920s. Therefore, if someone else is the end goal, how can your work possibly be authentic?
This phenomenon robs the majority of work in the public eye, the work that we all have to admire and aspire to, of the very simple quality meant to be at the heart of art; soul. Then again, art was never meant for us – we are not buying it. Art has to sell to those ‘successful’ people who will use you as a footrest before you can even tell them your name. Jackson Pollock says that art is a state of being. I say that Jackson Pollock is a wanker. If “Every good artist paints what he is” then in this climate, every good artist is hiding in the nuclear bunker that is anonymity. We, those of us with any sense of self are terrified that Mummy London will tell us we are not Wank enough to be Art. Herein lies the key fault of art in the modern day. It’s an industry of wankers who perpetuate a cycle in which we compromise integral aspects of ourselves for the benefit of others. This is something we do well enough on our own in everyday life without the benevolent hand of Art-God intervening. We need not bash our hearts into an ice cube mould with a London-shaped hammer. As has been the case since the Royal Academy critics, and the dickheads at the Paris Salon, there is a mould. There is a way that things are done, and if you don’t do them that way, then fuck off to McDonald’s. Perhaps they will teach you something about mass reproduction and selling your soul.
My solution is this: keep painting and writing. Make it vulgar and insulting. Once you’re done, photocopy it ninety million times, get on the National eExpress, pile the photocopies up in the middle of Hampstead Heath and set them on fire. If you’re lucky, they’ll call you subversive in your police report. Then come home and work in McDonald’s. People are better there anyway.
“Jackson Pollock, Cathedral, 1947” by Detlef Schobert is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.