Art for art's sake.

I'm in what is hopefully my last semester of college. I would give anything to just drop out and begin searching for a trade job, but there's enormous pressure for me to continue. I don't care anymore. Why bother finishing my graphic design degree in an area where no graphics jobs exist, and where they do I'd be making more money waiting on tables? I would love to work in the industrial field, and I would've left college long ago if I knew jobs like a machinist existed. Just think, no general public to work with, $15-20/hour starting out, working with tools, union benefits... the list goes on and on. I want to start looking now but apparently I have to waste another couple of months stressing about school, and even then I may not actually be done.

Which brings me to the point about art in schools. I loved my first few studio classes. Figure drawing was somewhat disappointing (one model throughout the entire semester... drawing the same dude gets old after a few months), but other than that it was great.

Then I took Printmaking.

Printmaking is a class that would've been interesting if it wasn't for the fact that a) you can create the same things with graphics programs, but cheaper and better, with 1/4 of the time and effort, b) the class was extremely late. Like, 6PM-9PM. I already had class during the day, too. Longest freakin' Mondays and Wednesdays of my life. Not to mention, half the time working for that class was bringing stuff home or staying late to finish prints. Awful.

After that I began to hate art for art's sake little by little. Not art that you feel like making because you're inspired, or just because. Not because you had a great idea that you'd like to do, and don't care about whether you can sell it or not. I hate art for art's sake when you're forced to make it for other artists. Whether they want to admit it or not, the majority of the art community is pretty pretentious. Many artists will try to find meaning in human feces smeared across a canvas. Something about the decay of humanity or something.

The art community hates non-artistic art. Artistic art is avant garde, and a lot of it is great. You'll see some of the most interesting and creative pieces with avant garde. You also have dumb shit like Kasimir Malevich's White on White, which looks exactly like it sounds. It's also hanging in a museum. Here, here's a picture of the masterpiece:

Then there's kitsch. A lot of it is bad. Think of most of the stuff on DeviantArt, homemade decorations sold at flea markets, or fiber optic angel paintings at Wal-mart. That's kitsch. There's a great article on avant garde vs. kitsch by Clement Greenberg, which you can read here: http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/kitsch.html

But then there's good non-avant garde art, as well. I've heard of a lot of people considering commercial art, fantasy art, digital art, and some other forms kitsch, which isn't fair. In a sense, kitsch is inferior to real art and is created by popular demand, and sucks the whole creative process out. However, why does all of this art have to be considered inferior? I've seen some amazing artists on places such as Elfwood that create fantasy pieces that would be sadly considered kitsch. I've seen some terrible art that would be considered avant garde. Why would the terrible avant garde piece be considered superior to the wonderful drawing of an elf or a dragon?

I think it's a problem with the art community in itself. It searches for substance when there doesn't have to be any. It glorifies art made for itself, and dismisses anything made for pure aesthetics as trash. Sometimes, I just want to make something pretty. Is that so wrong? Why does White on White have to be superior to a huge, colorful mural made on a crumbling wall in a poor neighborhood? Why does a single line or paint slopped down a canvas have to be better than a piece of fanart inspired by World of Warcraft or Trigun?

I think it's because human beings like to feel superior. I get treated like crap by some customers because they think they're better. People harrassed blacks, Native Americans, Mexicans, Middle Easterners, and Asians for years (and continue to this day) because they think they're better. It's when a person sees himself or herself as better than everyone else that evil lingers in their heart.

Yeah, I just called the art community evil. Here's some art inferior to Mr. Malevich's art up there.