Friday, April 17, 2009

Artist Or Bullshit Artist?

I’ve been a member of the deviantArt community for nearly 2 years. It is a fantastic website which allows you to showcase your artworks or works in progress. It’d kind of like youTube in the sense that it’s a huge community based, content driven platform. The only difference is that people on deviantArt generally give you intelligent feedback rather than saying “that’s gay.”

The problem i have with deviantArt (and any other popular, content driven platform for that matter) is that sometimes there is a fine line between art and shit. It is true that art as a whole is subjective, but i’m not here to debate whether Jason Pollock is an artist or not. The thing that drives me insane is when truly awful or just plain average pieces get praised.

For example:

Don__t_Let_Me_Go_by_mrs_daria

Okay sure, there is some sort of artistic expression in this image right? WRONG! This kind of shit belongs on myspace! Or at the very least in the ID category. If you view her profile you’ll find about 15 other identical images. Much like myspace.
Now i’m no saint when it comes to taking gratuitous/epic amounts of myspace photos. It’s fun as hell if you’re in the right mood, but there’s a time and a place for it.

That said, this photo has 1700 Favourites!?!
I mean what the fuck is up with that? Like 5000 comments of people saying “omg i love your eyes” and “omg you are so beautiful, do you think that if i comment on every one of your pictures you will consider sleeping with me?”

My best piece of art has 15 and the funny thing is I don’t consider that bad, i am just well aware that the system is all fucked up. People get popular from one image and then gain a religious following who worship the very ground they walk on. Then what happens to the other people, the ones with good art which deserves to be recognized? They go unnoticed and a lot of the time will never get that recognition they both deserve and crave. It’s a sad reality, but everything is a popularity contest.

Oh and get this! She actually has the audacity to bitch about how people don’t appreciate her art, they just admire her beauty.
OMG bitch, At least they are there in the first place! Some of us lesser mortals have to earn the right for our art to be viewed.
If you really want to be taken seriously as an artist, stop fucking taking pictures of yourself, try taking some of still objects, buildings, nature or…god forbid someone else…

IMG_2686

5 comments:

  1. I don't use the site but it sounds like there are a lot of try hards out there.

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  2. yeah. But that's the thing, it's one of my favourite sites. I just wish that people didn't have to fuck up absolutely everything that's good.

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  3. Don't let the arbitrariness of art appreciation get you down, Hamish. Everyone knows it's a festering pool of sycophance and self-congratulation, and that more often than not, the ability to bullshit eloquently about the beauty and artistic message of a piece is generally better received than any actual talent for beauty and the artistic message. Just go on creating and discovering, my friend. If something is truly beautiful and beautifully true, one can only hope that it will move beyond the flash-in-a-pan eminence that so many, ahem, bullshit artists achieve these days. If you still feel like raging, though, you should definitely Wiki "Piss Christ", laugh a little, then watch "Art School Confidential" and laugh a little bit more. Keep up the blog, dude, I'm enjoying it.

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  4. haha thanks man. nicely said =]
    I didn't know you had a google account, cool beans. You got a blog?

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  5. I have indeed got a blog, but as of yet have not written a word. Far too many exams and whatnot. I'm going to try to use it as a travel updater for the time being though. Oh, and by the way, I'm following your twitter. LOLZOR!

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