Dean Kissick — Harper’s Magazine

The Painted Protest: How politics destroyed contemporary art

Great art should evoke powerful emotions or thoughts that can be brought forth in no other way. If art merely conjured the same experience that could be attained through knowledge of the author’s identity alone, there would be no point in making it, or going to see it, or writing about it. If an artwork’s affective power derives from the artist’s biography rather than the work, then self-expression is redundant; when the self is more important than the expression, true culture becomes impossible.

This article explores the issues with the current art world and the significance of art in a world saturated in content. The writer is not alone in feeling confused about the purpose of some installations, as I’ve also experienced mediocre art given prominence in collections merely on the pretension present in the text accompanying the installation.

I think the problems with art today are symptoms of the democratizing effect greater access to tools has offered for creators. Digital art has allowed an overwhelming amount of creative work to be presented online at little to no cost to the viewer, and AI artwork has then stolen that material to remix it into something new with only a sentence or two of prompting text. Why go to a museum to just see art? Museums seem to have taken the angle of hosting “meaningful” artwork that has a political message or a horrifying story attached to its creation in an effort to increase its value to the viewer. At some point though they seem to have forgotten that the extra messaging was supposed to amplify good art, not replace it.