Art travels downstream from Culture. Yet, often, it feels as though Culture is not able to exist unless its been given Art's permission. Culture would, if we were living in a natural world, flow naturally. It would spring up from the soil simply because it was meant to grow there; the seeds scattered by hundreds of thousands of disparate people, living their lives and gliding between each other in the tandem march of time.
This, however, is no longer so. This is most explain by the push by advertising agencies of the 90s thru early 10s sucking up every feeble young artist like a sponge, sucking as much authenticity and youthful appeal as they could until they could get it distilled down to a perfect science. And a science they did so distill -- from the past decade, report after report rings out about "record breaking profits", a thing which would not be possible without their advertising pushes that allowed them to create the monopolies they currently hold.
At the same time as this was happening, a cultural push was being made against the snob, the gatekeeper, the critique. The mere fact a barrier to entry existed to the Art was in and of itself an affront to the IDEA of Art itself. We, dear people, no longer live in a world ruled by the arbitrary standard or moral; nay, we are above trite and outdated concepts as the tyranny of visual cohesion.
These things have left the modern artist useless and adrift. There is no outlet to cater their emotional vision to, and they are instead forced to service the masses with whatever viral concept exists at that exact moment in time. Long gone are the days for a piece to be taken in, admired, studied, and truly loved time and time again; ALL things, instead, must exist in the parameters of these bite-sized chunks of empty calories, to be swallowed and forgotten as soon as it's left view.
Do you believe this to have only affected your drawings? Nay. I go further, still. Can you think of a single piece of modern architecture you have admired, and has been admired by the public? Which piece of furniture have you bought recently have you thought "I can't wait to let my kids inherit that"?
Our world, the Culture, has been artificially inseminated, and rendered impotent for things that exist to decay and fall away. The plants that grow here were not meant to grow here, and only through the Art becoming "viral" for that briefest moment in time is something legitimate allowed to exist, before it is quickly and systematically pilfered of its genuine value, reduced to the amount of money it will generate in the short term.
How lucky, then, should an artist be, that they find a modern Medici -- a man for whom the Renaissance is simply a blank check away from it's beginnings. A snob, my friends. A man who is so universally enraptured by declarations and vision of beauty, he cannot help but act as the barbarian for his Prophet. He will make the Vision, the Work, the Art, real.
From these things, the world will shift again, it's seeds once again a product of someone who has walked in the dirt of the garden, and told the Master where things shall be plant.
This ultimately brings me to the point of this.
I cry for you, dear Medicis. Please, open your hearts to the world. Listen eagerly for the stories and woes and triumphs of the underclass plebeians who you have created. Purge yourself of the heresy and evils of rationalism and post-modernism; embrace, instead, the ideas of a well-meaning and ethically sound schizophrenic.
And to the artists, I beg you -- please stop lobotomizing yourselves.
