Contemporary art corrupts aesthetics. People have a duty to live in beauty
- Alexander Anisimov
- Apr 23
- 3 min read
The chasing of the number of works in so-called contemporary art for profit is becoming a symbol of the industry.
Falsely created stereotypes and trends aimed at increasing sales are uglifying the very concept of art. Today, almost any image is considered art. False notions are invented, a false perception of beauty is created, people's taste is distorted by looking at the blatant ugliness that is created and continues to be created by the army of modern artists. As a result, supply outstrips demand.
Before, art was elitist and only wealthy clients could afford it, but today it is being made as a mass production, like photography. We are told the trend is for art to be mass-produced and available to everyone. But it doesn't work that way, and history will set things right sooner or later. 90% of everything created today will fade into oblivion. And even the majority of authors with a name today, tomorrow will be on the dustbin of history. It's just the way it was and everything is as old as the world.
White Crows in Art in Contemporary Art Aesthetics
It is Impossible to magically create masterpieces. Galleries need sales, they want the artist to keep up with the market trends and regularly add to their collection. Look at online platforms (marketplaces) and their structure.
Essentially, they require the same thing. Google's algorithms are structured so that the more and more regularly they display artists' work, the higher ranking they get. The infamous CEO notion of optimizing websites to make it easier for search engines requires endless refinement: testing keywords that consumers can use to find anything on the internet at all.
However, how do artists keep up with all that and create more and more new works following such demands? How can an artist today even find his or her place in this chaos of meaningless works, painted by both fellow artists and dilettantes pretending to be artists. Do they have time to rethink the artistic image and create their own style and the most important thing that has always been so valued in art? The uniqueness of works, that is what art is, aesthetics, artistic image, which is able to affect a person so much that it can make him think while contemplating the image.
That's the way it has always been. What is it today? Art is turned into primitive comics or becomes like primitive drawings of children in kindergartens, coloring books. And that's art? What are the best-selling paintings today? The ugly ones, those paintings that are provocative. Those techniques of creating a complete mishmash on canvas, the combination of the uncombinable, the ugly mixing of objects and distorting images beyond recognition, complete kitsch create today's picture of the industry.
The army of art curators and art consultants, auction houses, whose criteria today becomes only the name on the market and the track record of awards of the artist, and most importantly the number of sales of his work further aggravates all this. They make the masses believe that this is the new trends in art. But in reality, it is simply degradation and feralization of mankind.
Soon we will not understand at all what is stored in museums, their exhibits will become ugly in the perception of the next generations.
Contemporary Art Aesthetics. Of course, all these things have already been in history and even such a brilliant civilization as ancient Greece went through periods of decline. Moreover, the decline was so severe that it led to the loss of even written language.
But White Crows do exist. The great Bernard Shaw once said, 'Only 2% of people think, 3% think they think, the other 95% are afraid to even think on pain of death'
So much for the answer to the question of what is going on. The mass-produced stuff called art is not. Art remains elitist and not for everyone.
The white crows - those artists and those galleries for whom art and beauty remain a single concept - cannot follow this. They are few in number, but they are fortunately there.
