Tag: modern art

Artist Portrayals in Media: So Horribly Accurate

In comedy, we’ll always find that artists are either portrayed as air-headed “connected to the earth” white people, or pretentious jerks. That’s how they have always been portrayed since the dawn of the 1990’s and 2000’s, and that’s how they will be portrayed until the end of time. At this point, the portrayals are iconic.

The only problem with these portrayals is how horribly accurate they are. No, really, it’s insanely accurate. Need proof? Go to a modern art museum. Not even that. Just open an art history book or biography. Time and time again, you’ll find that artists tend to be extremely arrogant and pretentious, trying to act like they are on some higher tier of existence than the common folk. This isn’t the case for all artists, but it is the case for a majority of them.

This is especially true in the case of most modern artists, who think they can get away with painting a blank canvas white and selling it for a million dollars. Well, they kind of can, given that the culture surrounding art and art critiques inflates an artist’s ego to the point of no return by going insane over said white-painted canvas. The culture only makes the artist’s attitude that much worse, encouraging them to make paintings that can be done in less than five minutes. Not even paintings, but also sculptures (there was a case where an art piece which was literally a pile of trash was accidentally thrown out by a cleaning lady who didn’t know it was part of the exhibit). The culture helps further the monster. But it doesn’t create it.

No, the artist grows into the stereotype in college, and even high school. They make friends with other artists, learn about art and somehow get it in their head that they are more “unique” and “free” because of it. They invest themselves in their craft, and become infected. Then they get mad when people make fun of said infection. They insist that the stereotypes aren’t true at all, then act exactly like their stereotypes (even down to dressing like them, just without the beret and scarf). It’s almost sad.

But, like I’ve already said, this stereotypes doesn’t apply to all artists. There are a few that lie outside of the stereotype, who are actually fairly normal, and even make fun of the stereotypes and the people who act like them. They are, unfortunately, few and far between.

Social Media as an Art Form

For some reason, there seems to be a separation between social media and art. Perhaps it’s the connotation that art is in some sense fine, something of both the classics and genius modern artists. Social media, despite its variance, is seen as something that can’t penetrate the realm of art, save for actual digital artists.

I can’t help but argue against that assumption. Well, now I argue against it, but a few months ago I agreed with it. But in taking a class in media forms, a rather interesting and hefty lecture involved social media as art, and how it reaches different audiences. There was so much to say about artistic involvement through social media as a form of unconventional means, and yet there is almost no academic research about it. When you look into it, social media is a form of affecting society on its own, and not through art. To make matters worse, almost all books on the subject are just self-helps on how to use social media wisely. Nothing on the discourse of social media and art.

Why is this the case? Maybe because social media isn’t quite taken seriously as an art form. For marketing, yes, for social movements, possibly. But art? No way.

I think that social media, when used correctly, can be both a bizarre and powerful medium for artwork and social commentary. And I think the most powerful example of that are memes, and the trend known as vapor wave.

How can memes possibly be art? Not conventionally. Modern art is all about the unconventional, challenging the status quo in order to point out the irony and hypocrisy of something going on. Although I heavily question a good portion of modern art and feel that modern artists in themselves are hypocritical/pretentious, I have to admit that there are ones that are insanely clever, particularly ones that are participatory (the audience can interact with the piece). This opens the space for memes to come in.

Memes, despite their apparent stupidity, are participatory forms of art in their essence. They’re images that are edited, via text post or some other form, to whatever the editor dictates. This in turn can cause more people to edit these images, creating a vast network of repetition, solidifying the original image (or figure, artwork, anything really), as a meme. And memes dwell in the world of social media, shared with and by thousands of people. Meme trends are created, and ultimately are archived for anyone who wants to find it.

Memes also, are often very political. They make fun of the current political climate, a particular figure (George Bush, Ted Cruz, etc.), or news that occur. They take the distasteful and turn it on its head for the sake of humor. Memes also can make fun of culture, society, and just about anything, which in itself is a form of art in how creative the variance can get. Memes, despite their ridiculousness, are just pieces of modern art, baby.

Now, what about vapor wave? What is vapor wave? Well, vapor wave was and is a phenomenon where images are layered in a way that appears like a pseudo-meme (the trend did have an origin in memes), attempting to be both aesthetically pleasing and humorous. Vapor wave takes much of its style from the Neo-Expressionist movement, which occurred from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. The Neo-Expressionist Movement attempted to be nonsensical but aesthetically pleasing through layer imaging, but rather than being humorous, it leans towards the more seriously critical. Vapor wave is almost just like that, except digital rather than physical, and funny rather than critical.

Social media is a powerful medium for the production and reproduction of participatory art, all of which goes under the radar of the connotation of “art”. People, without realizing it, are creating forms of art, which is not really considered art by “modern art” standards”, which I find to be an interesting paradox.