By Marc Abuan
disclaimer: this is a misguided, unedited, half-sober take on anything that this train wreck hits, so please forgive me if you shit your pants.
recently i’ve come across the correlation between art and economy and its flow through history- and in the words of a good friend and mentor, “both entities are mirrors- commentaries, mockeries, ironies” depending from where you sit. and that good friend was just me.
it’s easy to dismiss art from an economic, pragmatic, business point of view only as a tool and a visual stimulant, as in the case of advertising, which has become more of a complex science involving other allied sciences- anthropology, sociology, psychology, and all its pretension as a deep-seated cornerstone in modern society. or so it goes. and probably that’s why from an educational system geared towards practicality, where jobs equate to putting food in the table, injecting fear as a part of the curriculum of a future with empty pockets and walking from point a to point b, (as if it’s a crime not to travel around with a car), art is silly, useless, flamboyant, and above all, decorative. decorative has at most, the most revolting, insulting assumption of purpose of art in modern society.
because being born in a jizzsock that is the world right now blinded by sled dogs symbolized by wall street, we are conditioned to earn- to join the rat race- to buy, to consume, to throw away anything outdated- and (presuming that a creative soul is biologically inherited), artists are thrust into a world to please the sled dog drivers- and what do drivers see in art? largely this has been what artists (and in turn, designers) allow their job description to be; “decorators”- in the sense that money is exchanged for your work as long it is “beautiful”, or closer, visually appealing. there is a thick line that straddles between the two.
the modern world has forgotten the fact that art is equatable to humanity- and it goes without saying that those who simply cannot appreciate art, or merely fathom something without equating it economically, has lost his humanity. before all the social and economic systems were made and developed and agreed upon art has always been there, as a mirror through human development, documenting our journey and our story in the big picture.
this statement is also reflective with contemporary art. it has become a satire, a reverse mirror, a mockery, a parody, an insult, a deconstruction, a reversal – of what humanity has become- antisocial, egocentric, face-value. as a social test, hand over a couple of prints of basquiat or more recently, an oscar murillo to a business major, and tell him that’s art. let me know how he reacts.