modern “art” desensitized you.

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]In 1974, Marina Abramović performed a piece called Rhythm Zero, which involved her standing for 6 hours while the audience was allowed to use any of the 72 objects on her however they wished. She wanted to expose how people would behave when they're given permission. However, the core philosophical point here is about context. [music] The same act can be interpreted very differently depending [music] on the setting in which it occurs. When Abramović performed something publicly within the framework of art, it's understood as performance art. If the same actions occurred privately, it would be categorized as a form of abuse.

[00:00:43]In other words, the behavior itself may be identical, but the meaning people assign to it depends on the context.

[00:00:51]Most people think Abramović's performance was groundbreaking because of its conceptual meaning. But if you think about it, she didn't uncover anything particularly profound. It's the same kind of concept as a knife in a kitchen is not as threatening as a knife in the street at night. The narrative, whether it's a threat or not, depends on the function and the context. However, that's the surface level message. The actual meaning of Abramović's performance lies in the historical context. It gained traction predominantly because it was shocking, not because it revealed some profound truth. And what we're seeing here is not an isolated case. It's part of a much larger pattern in contemporary art. For example, Chris Burden's Shoot in 1971 involved him being shot in the arm in front of an audience, turning real physical harm into a piece of performance art. In 1987, Serrano created a photograph of a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass tank of his own urine. The piece caused immense scandal, [music] not just in the artwork, but politically as well, especially because it was funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. It received a lot of threats and was even vandalized. But, what exactly made it so powerful? Was it the message or was it the shock? Serrano himself said that the Piss Christ was not meant as an attack on Christianity, but rather a comment on the commercialization and trivialization of sacred symbols. How something as meaningful as Christ becomes a cheap object. Artists repeatedly used shock combined with sacred imagery to provoke a reaction. For example, Chris Ofili created the Holy Virgin Mary incorporating elephant dung into the painting, which many found deeply offensive. In 1999, Maurizio Cattelan created La Nona Ora, showing the Pope struck by a meteorite. These artists received public outrage, accusations of disrespect, controversy, and massive attention, but usually for a short period of time. You know what's interesting though? It seems that over time, the shock gets more and more severe.

[00:03:12]Later on, Marina Abramović created an exhibition where visitors had to pass between two naked people just to enter into the space. This would have been an absolute outrage if it happened 100 or even 50 years ago, and people would have probably been arrested. And the point here is not just nudity. Nudity has existed in art for centuries. [music] The point is the audacity to subject people to it, to make them participants [music] in something they didn't necessarily consent to. It's intrusive and an intentional blurring of boundaries. In each case of these artworks, the initial impact comes from shock. It forces attention before anything else. And what happens when someone's exposed to shock continuously?

[00:04:00]There's a psychological mechanism called habituation. Repeated exposure to something reduces the emotional intensity and normalizes what once seemed extreme. The nervous system adapts to extreme things.

[00:04:16]And the result of this is that what was shocking before isn't shocking anymore.

[00:04:22]Much of modern and contemporary art is made with the goal to desensitize.

[00:04:27]Vulgar, crude, or shocking images appear in galleries, on big screens, and basically in front of everyone. You really begin to wonder if these so-called artists are just perverted people under disguise. But nobody thinks about that because when it's presented as art, it becomes protected from any kind of moral scrutiny. What would be unacceptable in another context becomes normalized under the pretext of art.

[00:04:57]Susan Sontag wrote in Regarding the Pain of Others, "To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed and to have it serve as a token for your own experiences or feelings. There's no longer a simple, unmediated connection between atrocity and the observer." What Sontag is saying about photography can be extended to art more broadly. She argued that repeated exposure to images of atrocities doesn't necessarily deepen our understanding of those atrocities, but it can actually desensitize the viewers. People who have never experienced war begin to consume its imagery from a distance, which reduces the emotional intensity that they feel towards war and turns real suffering into something familiar and even normalized. And so, art becomes a vehicle for habituation, both moral and emotional. This means something quite scary, that context determines the moral interpretation of things. Now, just think about it. Why would this be problematic? Because then what happens is that people's morality is habituated.

[00:06:12]They see shocking images >> [music] >> not on secret websites that you were not supposed to access, but in cultural spaces, on big screens, in art galleries, where you go with your family. If everything becomes acceptable under the label of art, then what are we actually >> [music] >> valuing? Something shocking becomes normalized when it's presented as art, implying it's beautiful, sacred, and worth your attention. The question becomes if the meaning of these works is really in their message or is it in the reaction they generate? Because if shock is what gives something attention, what happens when people are no longer shocked by anything, which is kind of where we are today as a culture. Does the meaning remain or does the work lose its power entirely? I believe that great art is the art that stands the test of time. We don't know what is great art today because we're living in the time that it's being created and slowly being picked out. The art that outlasts the initial attention and the cultural trends and is given attention years after it has been created is the art that proves itself to be worthy. That's why I'm not too worried about the art that's being made that doesn't actually have any intrinsic value or worth because it's going to pass. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed the discussion. I wanted to bring this up because I think it's a very relevant and important topic that not a lot of people are talking about. So, please let me know what you think about this in the comments below and I'll see you in my next video.