I’m not sure what I’m witnessing these days. I’ve been seeing a lot more art, after a dark period of having neither the money nor the impetus to do so. But it’s unclear whether what I’m seeing is a renaissance or a death knell.
There is a lot of art happening in New York nowadays, but I’m not sure all of it is good. Actually, I’m quite sure some of it is bad. Is that okay? Do people still write bad reviews of things? I think it’s allowed, unless it’s about T*yl*r Sw*ft.
I do think there is a general fear of critique, and my lukewarm take is that this is why we’re getting a lot of half-baked ideas in new media. People are trying to pander to what they think the audience wants. But the audience doesn’t know what it wants!
On one hand, I believe in the power of the audience. The idea that a willing public should have no bearing on the creator is ridiculous to me, because if not for them, art would remain private. I believe in the audience being able to give a piece of art life, if only the creator will let their art be freely interpreted.
On the other hand, the problem with the audience is that it should not have the power to germinate new ideas. A creator creating for the audience alone is a trap that we fall into under capitalism. The idea that money is success is legacy, will result in mediocre art 100% of the time.
I saw the Alice Rohrwacher film La Chimera the other day, and enjoyed it very much. It’s very dreamy and spooky and European. It has a strange ending that could be sad or uplifting or just leave you walking out of the theater doing a Mediterranean *shrug*. It allowed the audience to feel the space between moments, and made some really impactful filming choices that brought you intimately into its world. As an audience member I was compelled to be both a witness and a participant. I like this feeling.
When I think about bad art, I have to get introspective, because of course I’m an artist and I participate in weird, niche, possibly terrible things all the time. I don’t think that effort is the determining factor for whether art is good or not, but it is one factor.
Director John Waters was recently interviewed by Another Magazine, and said the following upon being asked, “Where do you go to get inspired?”
“I am inspired every time I walk out of the house. I am inspired by human beings. I could sit in an airport and make up biographies of every person as they walk off a plane. In the art world, I keep up. I go to galleries and read magazines. I like to participate.”
This made me think about AI. I read about a man who has been using Chat GPT for all of his interactions with women on a dating site; he sees how long he can keep a woman ‘on the hook’, and also uses it to weed out ‘low quality women’. I also listened to a podcast where the hosts were talking about a new form of AI girlfriend; one who will complain and harangue you a bunch. AI girlfriends, they’re just like us!
My issue with this tech is not that it’s deeply sexist and antisocial. My issue is that, in the words of our immortal ruler Kim Kardashian:
I know this is very Capricorn-coded of me, but I keep going back to the concept of effort being the root of all functional things. Functional things for me include art, of course. A piece of art can function in ways both tangible and ephemeral. We need effort to exist and participate and thrive. Not in a Rise and Grind kind of way, but in a way that allows us to experience the wide and precious range of humanity.
The idea of effort is terrifying; it opens the door to yearning.