Art Is Not An Essay
All Aboard The Trash Boat
There were no shortage of experiments in the golden age of modern art. In painting and literature artists tried to use new forms and methods to capture the feeling of man at the end of history, of humanity in a disenchanted world.
In many respects these attempts to try and resolve, capture, express and represent man’s condition were commendable for their bravery and creativity. But it is possible to be creative and brave and also, still to fail.
Most of the experiments of modern art were failures, but they were feted nonetheless. Why is that? It is because they were appreciated for the content of their ideas rather than for their æsthetic power. In retrospect this was a huge mistake.
We don’t need a Jackson Pollack splashing paint to help us understand anything at all. We don’t need Samuel Beckett’s play about people in garbage cans to gain any insight into the human condition. The themes and archetypes they were struggling with are interesting, if obvious, but their execution is uninspiring.
These works should be re-evaluated, but it’s probably better to just move on.
Cargo Cult(ure)
When I was a kid I used to sneak fantasy novels into english class and read them under the desk while the teacher presented lower quality material. Flash forward to today and most kids don’t even read. The quality of media now is so high that it’s time to admit that many of the so-called classics simply cannot be read today.
Ivan Illich in Deschooling Society noticed that (in 1971!):
most people acquire most of their knowledge outside school, and in school only insofar as school, in a few rich countries, has become their place of confinement during an increasing part of their lives.
People are learning from the internet, from each other, from their families, from movies, from the lessons the economy teaches while the advice from official channels is largely endured and ignored.
Extrapolate that to society as a whole. Things are changing so fast that there is no way for cultural institutions to keep up, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try. And as they attempt to maintain relevance, as their grip on society slips away, inevitably newer forms, newer patterns and paths will come under attack.
Gaming, social media, crypto - somehow these are degenerate pursuits while reading Thomas Pynchon, attending the opera and playing chess are culturally enriching.
I slogged through Gravity’s Rainbow - it has some good parts but clearly needs to be rewritten. I’ve never made it through an entire opera without wishing it was over, without feeling like I was eating vegetables for long boring periods of time. Chess is actually awesome.
Everything Is Better Now
Writing, the phonetic alphabet specifically, is probably the greatest invention of all time. It allowed humans to freeze ideas and send them across time.
In the beginning there weren’t that many books and so good writers stood out more easily. There wasn’t that much to do so their faults were more easily overlooked.
Sentences could stretch on for entire pages, lengthly descriptions of what characters had for breakfast were tolerated, perhaps even enjoyed by the reader.
But all that’s over now.
Writing now needs to communicate directly. It needs to charm, it needs charisma. It needs to create a voice in the reader’s head they want to keep listening to and it needs to have something to say or be quiet.
It’s not that readers are too easily distracted — it’s that the world has gotten more interesting.
Concepts Are Not Art
And they never could be. Concepts are fun, Concepts are powerful, but once they are fully formed, they are communicable via words.
Art is something else. Art does not cooperate with the police (shout out to Nick Land).
Art needs to be appreciated in the æsthetic realm, without the baggage of ideas, and it needs a clean break.
NFTs and web3 are our escape from the schoolmasters, from the prison of their misguided frameworks. It’s better that it isn’t respectable. The longer it us consigned to the bucket of low culture, the better.
We are now free to decide for ourselves - “What is best in life?”
the symbols of the divine show up in our world initially at the trash stratum - PKD
The trash stratum is the perfect location for an insurrection HQ.
shout outs to Phil and JF at Weird Studies, Nick Land’s “Art As Insurrection”, Ivan Illich’s “Deschooling Society” found via Nina Power (found via Justin Murphy), and of course PKD’s Valis.
Yes, with a but coming…