Whenever I rewatch the David Fincher film "Fight Club", or read the original novel by Chuck Palahniuk, I find myself mentally replacing the notions of masculinity with the notions of art. The young painter is raised by social media to believe that if he paints enough, he too will become a successful artist; of course, this is simply a game of chance and savvy algorithm knowledge. Should he become successful, it will not be because of the type of art he makes, but for the way in which he sells it. As such, he has no need to know how to paint, and that ignorance will implicitly be passed to the next hopeful generation who stumble across his Instagram account.
The 21st Century has brought with it a sickening plague in the art world. There is no longer a sense, when visiting galleries, that we are witnessing revelation, or work that somehow seeks to supersede what came previously. As artists and spectators, we have become conditioned to believe that celebration of the mundane is art at its most primal, and any efforts towards advanced critical thinking simply to be an optional iteration of what art could be. This viewpoint is a cancer to the way we produce work, and the way in which we digest the world around us.
I am writing this manifesto, polemic, whatever you want to call it, because I have grown tired and weary of the pervasive values that have infested art. Why is an acrylic painting about a single facet of an individual held in the same walls as legendary oil paintings that sought to depict events a single person could have never comprehended in the moment, or fascinating subcultural found objects that struck the very core of existential being? Why is personal identity of any significance to the greatest pursuits of art? I will stand here now and say it has absolutely nothing to do with art. Personal identity is narcissism. Narcissism creates art that only exists to be perceived. The purpose of this perception is simply to validate the artist – “yes, you are special!”. What a sickness! What a disease! We celebrate our own rot as though we have disarmed all nuclear bombs worldwide.
I will make art that does not seek validation. I will not seek sympathy, pity, or any other narcissistic quality when I make art. I will battle the institution until my dying breath. The modernists will have their revenge, and I will bring them the writhing head of contemporary art. No matter what style, or arbitrary aesthetic my work could be labelled under, I will never consider myself a contemporary artist, and I will operate as much as I can away from the filth of the art paradigm. When my work goes on display, it will only be work that seeks to deride the filth around it, from the buildings to the so-called artists who populate the white walls with their declarations of attention.
There is little left for us to do other than plunder and steal from the landscape of visual detritus we have made for ourselves. The artist of today aims to create an advertisment of themselves, and so they are not artists but marketing agents. As such, we must destroy advertisments, annhilate their meaning, and give back nothing that can be reasonably deduced. These advertisments exist simultaneously in the brochures of magazines, on every digital surface of the modern internet, and on the gallery walls. There is no difference between any of these advertisments. Warfare against this narcissism is the only solution we have left. We must reject the idea that art should be packaged neatly in a digestible form - meaning is not precious, but the destruction of meaning is worth everything now.
All I seek is legacy. Whether it be by name or not, I do not care. All that matters is that my ideas persist in some way. I would not wish for my viewpoint to be the only one in the art world, but I firmly believe that by holding it, there is at least some small hope against the tyranny of contemporary art. Dear reader, never fail to be better. Never fail to improve your art. When the establishment tells you they want something from you, give them the opposite. Do not make art unless you are making it for the sake of art. Educate yourself on art history. Learn from those who we have failed. We have failed art, and only fools will tell you otherwise.
- Soup Villain, 2024
Contact Me About Art And How Futile It All Is: soupvillainy@gmail.com