The deep reason why Real Art will be back

Don’t you feel like Art nowadays has lost its value ? Isn’t it mostly a curiosity, a mix of shallow novelty, luck, and clever marketing ? Can you find a meaning to life by looking at Instagram art ? Do we ever find modern artists as influential as Jacques-Louis David, or Francisco de Goya ?

In this post I will diagnose the sickness of modern art, and explain why the cure is already on its way.

Here’s how modern art was weakened up to the point of lifelessness. So much so that when a roadblock like AI came along, we artists had no answer for it.

Art used to be a very, very serious affair. After making his statue of the David, Michelangelo was nicknamed “Il Divino” (“the Divine One”). But for the past 200 years, we’ve been steadily moving away from the very source of our reverence for Art.

In Goethe’s tale, Dr. Faust gains magical knowledge and power by selling his soul to the devil. Later on, he will find himself enslaved by the very powers he sought. Our commitment to science and rationality is a kind of “Faustian bargain”. As we gained all sorts of powers over reality, and pleasures in our bodies, we lost the only reason we had to make meaningful Art.

This loss of purpose is compounded by our unconscious worship of the golden calf of technology. Our overlords, with our help, created a completely new, unnatural world. They isolated us from nature, and promised comfort. They isolated us from our own minds, under the guise of “connecting us to the world” (social media). What’s more, now that we’ve become products, they attempt to replace us with AI. Once again, we notice a complete destruction of that one thing, that which pushed us to create since the very first cave painting.

What’s more, we were promised peace. Personally, I grew up after the so-called End of History — when the American Empire claimed that under its wing, there would be no more war, and no more struggle. Life from then on was meant to be easy-going, and the flattering voice of rationality and pleasure-seeking made itself ever stronger. Slowly, it overtook and silenced that other little voice, which turns artisans into artists.

Artisans into artists…. In a capitalistic, individualistic, rationalistic society, Art is a product, a commodity. It is meant to deconstruct and comment, rather than create. This leaves little room for real artists, and a lot of room for artisans. More and more, we’re missing that one thing…

And now that we’ve grown weak, that we lack purpose and meaning, Mother Nature has decided to strike back. She’s not having this anymore, and by a lot of estimates, the earth won’t be a very nice place to live on within the next 50 years.

Of course, we’ve been lied to on so many levels, and we also lied to ourselves. Mistake after mistake, we’ve made it to the edge of collapse. But it’s not all bad. In fact, in the background, something beautiful is happening.

You may not have noticed it yet.

As we fall, a great festival is beginning in another universe. The deeper our despair, the louder their song. And as we double down on our mistakes, and go further into madness, their choir becomes more joyous, and as it does, their voices enter into our universe.

They’re not singing any pop songs.

They have no electric guitars, synthetic sounds or famous singers.

In fact, as I sit alone in my office, and I listen to the echoes of their song, I hear…

A religious hymn.

As science shows its failures, as the Pax Americana collapses, technology proves to be a slavery machine, and nature takes its revenge on us, people are beginning to reach for the sacred again. Note that I’m not referring to a particular organized religion. The sacred can be anything you want.

There are plenty historical examples of this dynamic. After the collapse of the USSR’s atheist regime, Russians flocked back to religion. Between 1991 and 2008, the share of Russian adults identifying as Orthodox Christian more than doubled (from 31% to 72%), while the religiously unaffiliated plummeted from 61% to 18%. [.]. Note that this is a return to religion, but not to church. Again : the sacred doesn’t have to be organized religion.

Rationalism, pragmatism, and consumerism lead to emptiness. There is a god-shaped hole in our hearts, as French philosopher Blaise Pascal would say. This void in our hollow hearts makes our engagement in the world of art shallow. But it is yearning to be filled, and the time soon will come.

Natural disasters make people more religious. And openness to the sacred is that one thing, that motivates us to create, and appreciate art beyond entertainment or social ambition.

The romans were great warriors and organisers. Tenacious in anything they did, but they weren’t great artists. In many ways, just like our modern civilization. When they collapsed, even the destruction of the world’s knowledge by barbarians couldn’t stop the resurgence of creative art.

Free from the yoke of Roman pragmatism, artists began to invent all sorts of creative ideas. Painters, now motivated by genuine wonder, and a mission, organized their compositions according to musical harmony. They used inverse perspective, color symbolism, hieratic scale, and all sorts of innovative ideas. Slowly, painting would make its way to the state it was in the 1800s — its absolute peak. And let’s not even talk about architecture.

From 2010 to 2050, the growth of people with religious affiliation is expected to be 23 times larger than the growth of the unaffiliated population. This means, art is going to make a comeback.

Because when we lose our grip on the world, and when established beliefs falter, we can no longer afford the comfort of rationality. When the sacred is our only way of making sense of the world, we can no longer wave art off as mere entertainment.

Instagram art is the symptom of Art’s being bled dry over the past 200 years. But Instagram art isn’t enough anymore, and AI is forcing us to face up to this reality.

Over the next 10 years, there will be a return to genuine wonder about the world, and openness to the sacred. Fancy data-driven gallery expositions, or shallow, engagement-seeking novelty, or even publicity stunts, will all lose their appeal. And this will lead to a come back of real, genuine art.

It is our mission here at ArtPostAI to make sure, over the next decade, that this return of real Art does happen. This is the great adventure, the most rewarding path.

If you want in on the adventure, do one thing : subscribe and restack !

Till next time,

ArtPostAI.