4 ms·

Do you mean that art must be pessimistic? There are plenty of "happy" and "hopeful" works of art. And I find that definition highly reductive. Art is not onl

• bitwize 8y ago
  Of course it's reductive, but on this story's thread, almost the only time you see the A-word is when bleak walking simulators with downer endings are brought up. I'm forced to conclude that "art", like "hacker", has shifted in meaning: roughly, art is anti-kitsch. It's not art unless it rebels against popular standards of aesthetics (which are popular for a reason; humans inherently respond emotionally to certain things), because once an aesthetic becomes popular it is subject to commercial exploitation and therefore it dilutes true, authentic self-expression. And, much like kitsch is a low-effort (therefore easily producible, reproducible, and marketable) affirmation of popular aesthetics, the repudiation of such may be almost arbitrarily low-effort and still be considered high art. The repudiation itself is what matters, and all that matters, because the job of the artist is to struggle against the commercialization of society and of human experience -- not necessarily to achieve technical prowess or to innovate. I'm an amateur artist myself. I taught myself visual arts so I could make my own assets for games. I know art is, in reality, much more than this. But in order to wear the art badge in today's wider society, and thus be considered Worthy of Serious Consideration, message is both necessary and sufficient -- and it has to be the right message or it doesn't count.