by zackmorris | 2025-06-03 16:25:36+00:00
That paragraph caught my eye too, although my take was that art should say something beyond its style or composition, otherwise it's little more than a pretty picture.

Artists tend to go through stages where maybe they start out interested in it, or find that they have a unique talent, or like the community. Often they get stuck at the "look what I can do" stage, or sell out.

I think of the late Thomas Kinkade in that way, because even though his art is captivating, it doesn't seem to challenge the viewer. It just takes us to his vision at that time. Which feels like the minimum we can ask of art. Then merchandizing took over, and although he ended up successful while enjoying the life he had built, I wonder if some part of him dreamed of starting over free from all that so that he could truly express himself. Scandal and managing a vast network of franchises seemed to overshadow the real work of pushing boundaries, as if he abandoned art for some other purpose that I don't fathom.

Whereas at the opposite end of the spectrum, I think of Van Gogh as the epitome of the starving artist, where talent is irrelevant because no matter how well one performs, tomorrow never comes. There's only humble gratitude for now in the struggle. His paintings of broken figures making due in the squalor haunt me, reminiscent of everyone I know having to work hard every day to survive at a time when we're all growing poorer to feed the insatiable hunger of the ultra rich who feed on the last profits of commodification. Just like it's always been.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedroom_in_Arles

I keep that image as my desktop background to remind me that everything I've ever done is little more than memory and that the history of my life basically fits in a box. I'll die in obscurity after accomplishing little of any importance, witnessing all of my most heartfelt dreams manifest through the actions of others. Because I spent my life working instead of self-actualizing. Although in the end, maybe they're the same thing.

It doesn't matter to me if art is made in a computer if it says something. But in the vast majority of it, I see mostly derivative work, little more than Flash animation plastered over corporate graphic design. Even video games look exceptional but are just a veneer over mediocre gameplay. For the longest time I couldn't look at them as they approached the uncanny valley of pseudorealism, with their million dollar budgets draining funds away from the countless better games that might have been made.

Now AI is finally negating talent absolutely. The most human contribution will be to write "handmade" somewhere on something that wasn't made by a computer. It's astonishing to think that no matter how powerful AI becomes, it still won't have solved the most basic forms of human suffering on any timescale. Tech will just continue crushing down on all of us with its misaligned incentives. Until art is thought of as a Banksy mural scribbled on the side of a tenement beneath a skyscraper, narrating our spiritual and moral decline.

At least with talent out of the picture, we may see a renewal of the humanities for the sake of love. Perhaps the decline of meritocracy before it devolves into fascism. If we're lucky, a mocking of ego for its hoarding of wealth. When I think of the most inspiring art, I think of all of us, each divine, finding hope in tragedy, poignantly lighting the way out of the darkness of history that's been cast over our eyes by the insufferable winners.