This is NOT art...

[00:00:00]Art can be found in many forms. In paintings, in sculpture, in cinema, in music, in photography, and even in video games. And art can be beautiful. It can be disturbing, old, modern, abstract, strange, even impossible to understand at first. Real art does something. And then there is this And somehow we are told that this too must pass under the sacred name of art.

[00:00:39]And the moment we say no, I I do not think that this is art. This is just literal garbage. We are corrected by the curator, the critic, the collector, and the snob. They will tell you you don't understand it. You are not educated enough. You just don't get modern art.

[00:01:02]But who are these people? Who gave them the authority to decide what we are allowed to value? Who taught us that our own judgment is worthless unless it is approved by the art world? And more importantly, what kind of culture teaches people to kneel before garbage and call it art?

[00:01:28]Almost everybody knows the situation.

[00:01:31]You are looking at some supposed piece of art and you feel deep inside the urge to protest and very carefully you let out the words, I do not think this is art. Then there falls a silence and from the corner of the room you can feel the gaze of someone hitting you in the back of the neck. And then suddenly right behind you, you hear the words. You cannot say things like that. You just don't understand it. It is the art snob. That one friend or that one person who feels the urge to call out your judgment. Not by talking about the piece, not by engaging in conversation, not by explaining why this should be art, but by attacking your sophistication and knowledge. Your taste is just too simple. Your mind is just too small.

[00:02:28]Your soul has not read enough French literature.

[00:02:32]But what is happening here? Why are you suddenly not allowed to judge? Who is this art snob to tell us how to see? And this is where Nietze becomes useful because Nietze was brilliant at seeing the hidden motives behind noble words.

[00:02:51]And behind the noble words of the art snob, depth, theory, subversion, concept, we often find something much uglier. Resentment.

[00:03:03]The resentment of someone who cannot create beauty. So he calls beauty naive.

[00:03:10]The resentment of someone who cannot climb the mountain. So he declares mountains oppressive.

[00:03:17]And instead of becoming stronger, he lowers the standard. Instead of learning how to climb, he cuts down the peaks.

[00:03:25]And then he calls the flat landscape progress.

[00:03:29]This is why the art snob loves garbage.

[00:03:33]Not because the garbage is great, but because garbage humiliates the people who still believe art should be great.

[00:03:40]It lets him say, "H, you still want beauty? How primitive. You still admire craft. How conservative. You still want art to move you. How childish.

[00:03:53]This is not creation from abundance. It is revenge dressed up as sophistication.

[00:04:00]And the moment someone says you are not allowed to judge this, we are no longer talking about art, we are talking about authority, status and power. And that is exactly where we should refuse.

[00:04:17]But the art snob is only the first layer. Behind him stands something much bigger. the museum curator, critic, collector, auction house, and the rich person looking for some juicy tax evasion. And here the lie becomes even stranger because we are told that this garbage is radical, that it is shocking, dangerous, subversive, and against the system. But what if the museum expects it? The curator can explain it. The collector buys it, the auction house inflates it, and the rich use it as an asset over and over again. Then what exactly is being subverted?

[00:05:05]This is ideology.

[00:05:07]Ideology is not only propaganda posters and political slogans. Ideology is when the system hides itself. The power presents itself as rebellion. Or in the words of Xijek, what this short circuit between market and culture entails is the waning of the old modernist avenuard logic of provocation of shocking the establishment. Today more and more the cultural economic apparatus itself in order to reproduce itself in competitive market conditions has not only to tolerate but directly to provoke stronger and stronger shocking effects and products. Just think of the recent trends in the visual arts. Gone are the days when we had simple statues or framed paintings.

[00:05:59]What we get now are exhibitions of frames without paintings, dead cows and their excrement, videos of the inside of the human body, the inclusion of all factory effects, and so on. Here again, as in the domain of sexuality, perversion is no longer subversive. Such shocking excesses are part of the system itself. the system feeds on them in order to reproduce itself. Perhaps this is the one possible definition of postmodernism as opposed to modernist art. In postmodernism, the transgressive excess loses its shock value and is fully integrated into the established artistic market.

[00:06:50]So the problem is not that this art is too radical. The problem is that it's not radical at all. This is not revolt against the bourgeoisi. It is the bourgeoisi selling itself the image of revolt. But underneath nothing changes.

[00:07:10]The rich stay rich. The curator stays priest. The public stays silent and garbage becomes valuable because the rich people stand around it. It is standardized rebellion. Rebellion as product, subversion with a price tag.

[00:07:30]And this brings us to the money. Because if this so-called rebellion has a price tag, then we should follow it.

[00:07:37]Thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions for this.

[00:07:42]And this is where Markx becomes unavoidable because Markx understood that capitalism does not only sell things. It sells status, prestige, power, and fantasy.

[00:07:56]And then it makes it look like all of that value is magically inside the object itself. The object.

[00:08:05]This is commodity fetishism. A social relation between people starts to look like a natural property of a thing. So the value is not inside the painting.

[00:08:18]The value is produced around it by the galleries, the collectors, the museums and the auction houses. They gather around the object. They inflate it. They protect it. They speak over it. And then they pretend the object itself contains the value.

[00:08:39]But this does not only insult real art, it destroys the conditions for new art.

[00:08:46]Because when every empty gesture can be inflated into genius, real creation becomes harder to see. Real artists are buried under fake value. Real risk is replaced by market scandal. And real beauty is replaced by expensive emptiness.

[00:09:08]And this is the real damage. Not only that garbage is called art, but that real art is pushed aside by the performance of value.

[00:09:20]But what can we do about it?

[00:09:25]What can we do about it, you ask? Well, we speak up. We judge and we say this is not art. And maybe even better, this is anti-art. And that is fine. Let us make that category. Go against beauty if you want. Make your dot on a canvas. Put garbage in a museum. There is a place for that. Maybe it's even important.

[00:09:52]Maybe anti-art is necessary, if only because it helps us to see the difference between what art is and what art is not. Not because we hate art, but because we love art too much to let the word be emptied. And we should realize something very important. It is not up to the art snob to determine what art is. Not the curator, not the collector, not the rich. Art is a public relation.

[00:10:24]It exists between the artist and the people. So it is also up to the people to judge, to define, to value. So let us define it. Let us speak about real art.

[00:10:38]Let us watch real art, share real art and value real art. Because there is more than enough real art and there are more than enough real artists, maybe even on the corner of your street. So let us not value garbage. Let us not kneel because a snob tells us to. Let us give our attention to what is alive because garbage attracts flies and art attracts people.

[00:11:09]Thank you for watching this video. I [music] understand that this topic might be somewhat controversial. It might even be interpreted as just an opinion. And that is the point exactly. It is not merely an opinion. It is [music] a judgment.

[00:11:26]I do personally believe that we humans need art in our lives if only to show what our world could be. For [music] now, I hope that something good happens to you today, my fellow human being. And I hope to see you in the [music] next video.