A culture of artistic distrust has developed in the U.S., cultivated on the internet and perpetuated by people who take the simplicity of art as a signifier of its quality. This new traditionalism in the artistic world reflects a broader issue in our economic system itself.
It’s no surprise that art and capitalism have never meshed well. By nature, art is motivated by emotion. Capitalism warps the incentive of producing art from something pure into making money. With this comes a commodification of art, showcased when works by famous artists like Banksy or Damien Hirst are valued because of their high market price rather than their artistic significance.
When the cash-grab incentive of capitalism meets the inherent subjectivity of art, artists are motivated to pump out works with no creative intention. As I’m not the first to claim, when an artist creates a piece considering what will sell well, that art becomes a commodity.
With social media, the sought-after idea of the “influencer lifestyle” is thrown into the mix. Artists seek to sell themselves as a brand. In this climate, you can never quite tell what an artist’s true intentions are. Art can seem like an easy out for people who want to strike it rich, go viral, grab some cash or any other phrase for a quick noncommittal attempt at fame.
People aren’t slow to point out this commodification when they see it, or at least when they think they see it. The comment sections under videos of contemporary art or short-form poetry are often filled with claims of “not real art” or accusations of scamming. After all, it’s hard to reckon with the idea that a blank canvas painted blue may be art.
The poet Rupi Kaur published her book, Milk and Honey, in 2014 to much scrutiny. The book features typically very short poems (around four lines) that are sometimes accompanied by simple illustrations.
“Do airpods not have wires because we are scared of connection?” one piece reads.
Most of them follow this format of normal sentences, ones you would hear in conversation, broken into enjambed lines and signed “-rupi kaur” at the end.
Kaur’s poetry is both revered and loathed. Many are moved by her lived experiences surrounding abuse and trauma, while others discount her work as fake or “low effort.” After all, there is a lack of many common signifiers of poetry in her pieces. All of her work in Milk and Honey includes line breaks, but metaphor, prosody, alliteration, and imagery are often left out. The components that Kaur’s poems lack, combined with their shortness, can call into question the poet’s motivation.
We have reckoned with the implications of “low effort art” before. Famous contemporary artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) is most well-known for his controversial views. He pioneered the idea of the “readymade,” objects that come pre-constructed, and presented as art, rather than created by the presenter. By the simple intention of elevating an object to the status of art, it becomes art.
Duchamp was a key figure in the Dada movement, which rejected traditional values of art and sought to create a “new art.” His work “Fountain” (1917), a simple, unchanged men’s urinal, sparked outrage and discussion in the artistic community when it was rejected from an exhibit by the Society of Independent Artists.
People have a right to be worried about the state of art, it can seem impossible to know if an artist’s intentions are sincere. But the blame too often gets shifted from the commodifying system, to artists themselves. “I hate modern art,” has become an anthem to those who see the only value in art to be how much time it took to make.
This cynicism is part of the harmful environment that capitalism creates. By bastardizing the incentive of art production, a deep distrust in art is cultivated. This mentality is harmful to all art and all artists. When you start to put any limitations on what art can and cannot be, you open the floodgates to elitism and gatekeeping.
Art in the hands of a select group of people, such as the upper class, is a tool for isolating and distancing the elite from the commoner, creating a cultural gap between those with physical access to art and those without. This gap is dehumanizing because art is part of our identity as humans. When we distrust art so deeply, we distrust the only medium through which the human experience can be shared.
Where do we go from here? How do we beat traditionalism? We can start by creating more accepting environments both online and offline, and encouraging people to interact with art rather than discouraging them. Artists thrive in environments with diversity in creativity, when the ideas of as many people as possible can be pulled together and collaborated with. The less restriction we put on art, the better artists will become. Embrace the bad poetry.
Photo: “The Fountain” by Mydhili Bayyapunedi is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
