Art is dead.
At least, if I'm to take seriously 80% of what I've been seeing lately, it sure is. I blame the internet for most of it, myself.....everyone and her grandmother and her dog has a blog or twelve and has designated herself a 'journalist' or an 'essayist'. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry (particularly the Dicks) has a digital camera, webcam, and/or cellphone camera and a flickr, MySpace, and/or Youtube page and has designated himself a 'photographer' and 'filmmaker'. It's fucking ridiculous, completely maddening. Bad 'art' is everywhere on the 'net, but that's not even the worst part.
Don't get me wrong, talentless gits have ALWAYS tried to pass themselves off as artists. There have always been street poets, Central Park sketch artists, and a gazillion guitar-torturing, self-torturing, and audience-torturing singer/songwriter wannabes making the rounds of the cafes in the West Village, not to mention all the schmucks wandering around in black (who WEREN'T wearing it strictly for its slimming properties) with pained expressions on their faces and nothing between their ears, hoping to be labelled as intellectuals by OTHERS, but with noplace to flat-out label THEMSELVES. These people have always existed, but their delusion was limited to themselves and perhaps a few of their equally dimwitted friends and families, if ONLY because their 'work' was stopped for quality's sake before they could commit it to a public forum.
But not anymore. Bad writers have Blogger and Wordpress and god-only-knows what the fuck else to 'publish' their blather, and scads of promotion websites to get the word out (just take a look at the side of this page, for pete's sake...heh). Bad photographers have Flickr and MySpace, bad filmmakers have MySpace and Youtube, and everyone's got virtually unlimited domain names to scoop up and web services to subscribe to, so they can build their very own, personalized, craptastic pile o' pseudoartistic manure, and when all that's done.....well, damn, skippy. If I've got a REAL LIVE WEBSITE, then I've GOT to be an Artist....right?
Wrong, fool. I'll admit, the net allows for real artists to get their shit seen more widely and a whole lot cheaper than anything that came before it. But the downfall of all this is that people like me and a lot of my friends, who appreciate good art and do seek it out, are getting so fucking sick and tired of reading page after page of unemployed junkies waxing poetic about their cats, their exes, their drug problems, and all the talent they think they have, as they spin around their living rooms till they get dizzy and puke, snapping pictures the whole time with their circa-2002 .5 megapixel digital cameras....that we've all but given up looking. And worse still, a lot of the people who might actually have made MONEY off their writing or visual art a few years ago are limiting themselves to blogging and Flickr-ing, honestly believing they're going to be 'discovered'. I was discussing the latter with a friend the other night over drinks when I realised something else horrifying...I AM a published writer, one who has been getting work published for real CASH since I was a teenager, and who HASN'T been published since Istarted BLOGGING....not because I honestly think I'm remarkable enough or promoted enough to be discovered via the net, but rather, because this has made me lazy. Shit, even my writing STYLE has become lazy. I look at what I've written here so far and can't help but wonder....what the hell is up with all those ellipses?
But I digress. Or rather, I rant. After all, isn't what the internet's for? (Well....that, and porn....)"
Don't get me wrong, talentless gits have ALWAYS tried to pass themselves off as artists. There have always been street poets, Central Park sketch artists, and a gazillion guitar-torturing, self-torturing, and audience-torturing singer/songwriter wannabes making the rounds of the cafes in the West Village, not to mention all the schmucks wandering around in black (who WEREN'T wearing it strictly for its slimming properties) with pained expressions on their faces and nothing between their ears, hoping to be labelled as intellectuals by OTHERS, but with noplace to flat-out label THEMSELVES. These people have always existed, but their delusion was limited to themselves and perhaps a few of their equally dimwitted friends and families, if ONLY because their 'work' was stopped for quality's sake before they could commit it to a public forum.
But not anymore. Bad writers have Blogger and Wordpress and god-only-knows what the fuck else to 'publish' their blather, and scads of promotion websites to get the word out (just take a look at the side of this page, for pete's sake...heh). Bad photographers have Flickr and MySpace, bad filmmakers have MySpace and Youtube, and everyone's got virtually unlimited domain names to scoop up and web services to subscribe to, so they can build their very own, personalized, craptastic pile o' pseudoartistic manure, and when all that's done.....well, damn, skippy. If I've got a REAL LIVE WEBSITE, then I've GOT to be an Artist....right?
Wrong, fool. I'll admit, the net allows for real artists to get their shit seen more widely and a whole lot cheaper than anything that came before it. But the downfall of all this is that people like me and a lot of my friends, who appreciate good art and do seek it out, are getting so fucking sick and tired of reading page after page of unemployed junkies waxing poetic about their cats, their exes, their drug problems, and all the talent they think they have, as they spin around their living rooms till they get dizzy and puke, snapping pictures the whole time with their circa-2002 .5 megapixel digital cameras....that we've all but given up looking. And worse still, a lot of the people who might actually have made MONEY off their writing or visual art a few years ago are limiting themselves to blogging and Flickr-ing, honestly believing they're going to be 'discovered'. I was discussing the latter with a friend the other night over drinks when I realised something else horrifying...I AM a published writer, one who has been getting work published for real CASH since I was a teenager, and who HASN'T been published since Istarted BLOGGING....not because I honestly think I'm remarkable enough or promoted enough to be discovered via the net, but rather, because this has made me lazy. Shit, even my writing STYLE has become lazy. I look at what I've written here so far and can't help but wonder....what the hell is up with all those ellipses?
But I digress. Or rather, I rant. After all, isn't what the internet's for? (Well....that, and porn....)"
Labels: Art Bell, bad art, blogging, blogs, photography, pseudoartistic windbags, pseudointellectuals, writing
posted by Róisín Ruaat 10:45 PM
4 Comments:
Haha
You used "craptastic"
Hell yeah! Anyone can be a journalist now! That's why I was able to get press seats 10 feet away from the ring at the last Cagefight. I was a "freelance writer for a metro LA Weekly column" aka my college paper but they didn't ask, I didn't say! LOL, at least I hope I'm on the high end of the bad art out there ;)
A frickenmen. The armchair photographers drive me nuts! I have no illusions that my blog is anything more than a massive download of poo from my head, but I don't pretend it's anything more than it is.
I know a few people with delusions of being "artists" or "photographers" and it's all I can do to NOT yell and scream "OWNING A CAMERA DOES NOT AN ARTIST MAKE!" at them.
Hm. I feel better now. :)
Bravo! Well put. For the rest of my life I will be paying off my film school loans cuz everybody's a filmmaker now. It's like having a degree in fast food.
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