essays like this help reinstate the hope in me that not everyone wants to live in this surface level world being forced onto us 🙏🏻 thank you this was so well-written :)
i visited the Rothko Chapel in 2017, and it literally brought me to my knees. i have never experienced art so overwhelming in my life. the work is, to be a bit cliche, deafeningly silent. i don't know any other way to put it. if you ever have the chance to go, you absolutely must.
i've been thinking a lot about this a lot, and you managed to put it into words. thank you.
essays like these always make me feel more sane. lately i’ve been feeling like everything i see is a regurgitation of something that already exists, it’s all made for mass consumption. the obvious thing that comes to mind is the endless biopics that have been coming out for the past few years. i’ve also been reading Augé’s Non-places, and the way you describe the art that’s being made today reminds me of how he describes non-places (made to be frictionless, and crucially are able to make anybody feel “at home” in them because they’re equally isolating to everyone). the only thing that has recently managed to make me feel something deeper, in terms of art, has been the marina abramovic retrospective in London (i went a total of 4 times i think). one piece in particular, Rhythm 2, really stuck with me: it’s two sets of photographs, the first one showing her after taking a pill given to schizophrenics with catatonia and the second showing her after taking a tranquilizer. the photos themselves seem unremarkable at first, but looking at them for longer you start to feel really uncomfortable, especially if you know the context. i think another reason why i kept going back was that her art feels very personal to me because of her background, especially her earlier works referencing Yugoslavia. even though she made those pieces almost 50 years ago, the feelings that they evoke still hold up. the whole exhibition made me reflect on the situation in ex-Yugoslavian countries now and how nothing’s really changed. this is a really specific example, but i feel that it is important (to me at least) to have access to art that truly feels representative of something more personal and complex, since we’re forced to constantly numb ourselves to survive as the world is on the verge of collapse. i could write so much just about this exhibition alone, but i’ll stop here :) thank you for this piece!
Listen, P.E. ... I do not know you well enough to know whether you need affirmations like this. I know that I have, in my creative endeavors. Just keep writing. Your thinking, and your writing, is so important. And so good.
I think plenty of content back in the day (e.g. The Red Badge of Courage, The Scarlet Letter, even lower brow stuff like I Love Lucy) bashed you over the head with the message and symbolism or super obvious linear slapstick humor and to an extent you are engaging in some "presentism" in analyzing obviousness in media.
On the other hand, the part about art/media that is not challenging and serves to affirm and validate made me think of this:
Not long ago, it would have been embarrassing for adults to admit that they found avant-garde painting too difficult and preferred the comforts of story time. What Gadsby did was give the audience permission — moral permission — to turn their backs on what challenged them, and to ennoble a preference for comfort and kitsch.
The most chilling but truthful “We live in incredibly callous times.”
As for folks being caught up with their perception, I do believe that that there are numerous contributing factors. But now unfortunately it is the new normal.
My fear is that creativity & innovation is going to be stifled on a greater scale because many parents opt to use electronics as a means of entertainment for their kids. What we are experiencing now is just the tip of the iceberg.
I too feel like this sometimes. However, I don’t know that these trends are the same everywhere you look.
It feels like there are a far greater number of popular, deep and often quite ambiguous TV shows than my youth. The same could be said for a lot of cinema (A24 and the like as an example). Many videogames - particularly independently developed ones - can be opaque and thoughtful.
Popular music is quite homogenous, but there’s lot of great hip hop and electronic music which provokes difficult, unclear or contradictory emotions and some of which crosses over.
I think the main thing that I disagree with here is the inference that people who watch a popular YouTuber aren’t also consuming challenging art - that the greater the viewership of the most watched thing, the fewer people are consuming anything else. That feels like an argument that could have been made with regards to TV in the 80s and would have been too simplistic then. I spend a large part of every day listening to ambient music that often seems to have no effect on me at all but then sometimes suddenly moves me very deeply. However, you can also count me amongst the viewership who watched that last rubber band get pulled on to the watermelon.
essays like this help reinstate the hope in me that not everyone wants to live in this surface level world being forced onto us 🙏🏻 thank you this was so well-written :)
i visited the Rothko Chapel in 2017, and it literally brought me to my knees. i have never experienced art so overwhelming in my life. the work is, to be a bit cliche, deafeningly silent. i don't know any other way to put it. if you ever have the chance to go, you absolutely must.
i've been thinking a lot about this a lot, and you managed to put it into words. thank you.
essays like these always make me feel more sane. lately i’ve been feeling like everything i see is a regurgitation of something that already exists, it’s all made for mass consumption. the obvious thing that comes to mind is the endless biopics that have been coming out for the past few years. i’ve also been reading Augé’s Non-places, and the way you describe the art that’s being made today reminds me of how he describes non-places (made to be frictionless, and crucially are able to make anybody feel “at home” in them because they’re equally isolating to everyone). the only thing that has recently managed to make me feel something deeper, in terms of art, has been the marina abramovic retrospective in London (i went a total of 4 times i think). one piece in particular, Rhythm 2, really stuck with me: it’s two sets of photographs, the first one showing her after taking a pill given to schizophrenics with catatonia and the second showing her after taking a tranquilizer. the photos themselves seem unremarkable at first, but looking at them for longer you start to feel really uncomfortable, especially if you know the context. i think another reason why i kept going back was that her art feels very personal to me because of her background, especially her earlier works referencing Yugoslavia. even though she made those pieces almost 50 years ago, the feelings that they evoke still hold up. the whole exhibition made me reflect on the situation in ex-Yugoslavian countries now and how nothing’s really changed. this is a really specific example, but i feel that it is important (to me at least) to have access to art that truly feels representative of something more personal and complex, since we’re forced to constantly numb ourselves to survive as the world is on the verge of collapse. i could write so much just about this exhibition alone, but i’ll stop here :) thank you for this piece!
Listen, P.E. ... I do not know you well enough to know whether you need affirmations like this. I know that I have, in my creative endeavors. Just keep writing. Your thinking, and your writing, is so important. And so good.
loved this xxxx
Just FYI, I think the reason Rothko is in the discourse might be that there is an large retrospective of his in Paris at the moment.
I think plenty of content back in the day (e.g. The Red Badge of Courage, The Scarlet Letter, even lower brow stuff like I Love Lucy) bashed you over the head with the message and symbolism or super obvious linear slapstick humor and to an extent you are engaging in some "presentism" in analyzing obviousness in media.
On the other hand, the part about art/media that is not challenging and serves to affirm and validate made me think of this:
Not long ago, it would have been embarrassing for adults to admit that they found avant-garde painting too difficult and preferred the comforts of story time. What Gadsby did was give the audience permission — moral permission — to turn their backs on what challenged them, and to ennoble a preference for comfort and kitsch.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/01/arts/design/hannah-gadsby-brooklyn-museum-picasso.html?smid=nytcore-android-share
YESSS THANK YOU
stunning essay, thank you for putting this to words.
The most chilling but truthful “We live in incredibly callous times.”
As for folks being caught up with their perception, I do believe that that there are numerous contributing factors. But now unfortunately it is the new normal.
My fear is that creativity & innovation is going to be stifled on a greater scale because many parents opt to use electronics as a means of entertainment for their kids. What we are experiencing now is just the tip of the iceberg.
this resonated. thank you!
I enjoyed this so much. Thank you.
This is great essay. We need a different perspective in this world that's not focused on surface-level and materialistic things.
I too feel like this sometimes. However, I don’t know that these trends are the same everywhere you look.
It feels like there are a far greater number of popular, deep and often quite ambiguous TV shows than my youth. The same could be said for a lot of cinema (A24 and the like as an example). Many videogames - particularly independently developed ones - can be opaque and thoughtful.
Popular music is quite homogenous, but there’s lot of great hip hop and electronic music which provokes difficult, unclear or contradictory emotions and some of which crosses over.
I think the main thing that I disagree with here is the inference that people who watch a popular YouTuber aren’t also consuming challenging art - that the greater the viewership of the most watched thing, the fewer people are consuming anything else. That feels like an argument that could have been made with regards to TV in the 80s and would have been too simplistic then. I spend a large part of every day listening to ambient music that often seems to have no effect on me at all but then sometimes suddenly moves me very deeply. However, you can also count me amongst the viewership who watched that last rubber band get pulled on to the watermelon.