Introduction
Every piece of art tells a story, one which can be as expansive as a novel, or as simple as the curiosity expressed in a child’s drawing. Art can be described as Discovery, Expression, and Revelation.
Discovery
At one point in time each piece of artwork was nonexistent. Then an idea arose in the mind of the artist which proved compelling enough to manifest in the real world. Sometimes such an idea is inspired by something in the real world that the artist wishes to express. That could be as simple as the colors used to portray a piece of fruit, or as difficult as capturing the wondrous complexity of a natural landscape. Other ideas are of fantastical subjects, the mingling of the real and the imagined.
All humans are artists in this sense. Everyone can imagine images and stories in their mind. Communication itself is based on imagining the response one might get to a phrase or turn of words, a fundamentally artistic concept. And it is here that the nature of art as a symbolic expression of potential can be seen. Whether that potential remains fantastical or is brought into reality, literally or metaphorically, it exists as a testimony to imagination.
Expression
Expression is where artists are made. Though every human is a mental artist, most stories and images will remain concealed in the mind, unable to be expressed. Those with a stronger drive to express images and stories take to artistic representation. Expression is where mental abstraction turns into real potential, the birth of an idea. This is where novels are written, paintings and drawing are illustrated, and music is composed.
Revelation
Revelation, coming from the Greek word for unveiling, is the last stage of art. This is where the completed representation of an idea is presented to others, with the idea of transferring that idea to them. And as the audience imagines and interprets the idea, that is when their own journey of discovery begins.
Purpose
That is the process of how art is imagined, created, and received. What then is the point of an artistic idea? The point of a fable or parable is to influence the morality of the audience. A dialogue of contrasting ideologies may serve to either inform the audience about the nature of such ideas, or to get the audience to think through arguments, thus becoming wiser and more discerning. The purpose of fantastical drawings and worldbuilding is to encourage the creativity of the audience, inspiring them to manifest such creativity in the world. And so forth.
In any case, an artist’s job is to take a complex abstract idea and make it presentable. If the audience is non-generalist, more complex tales and artistic works are created, which have layers that general audiences would not be expected to understand. This is High Art. If the audience is generalist, then stories are designed to present complex issues in easily understandable ways. This is known as Low Art. To contrast the two, one might compare an epic told to kings and a fairy tale designed for common folk, or a symphony and a ball waltz.
Epics and fairy tales were originally created to tell stories about the religions of ancient societies. However, high level discussion of religious ideas, philosophy, and language are things for only a small percentage of society, and even many of those intelligent people are necessarily devoted to other pursuits. Thus, folk culture exists to infuse these ideas into the general population in easily understood concept. Folk culture tends to demonstrate how advanced ideas are acted upon, rather than going into the philosophy behind them.
Since the ideas of the social elite change more quickly than the general ideas of the population, this results in folk culture having more resilience than the ideas that inspired it. Indeed, even after most ancient religions have faded into obscurity, with only Hinduism, Shinto, and small tribal religions remaining in relatively direct forms, we still have remnants from them in our cultural stories even to this day. This has occurred via the process of de-mythologizing, whereby tales of the gods become stories about folk heroes, and the stories of folk heroes then become the basis for the archetypes of fairy tales.
Thus, even when the culture of the original artist is long since lost to time, some part of their drive remains.
However…
This is the concept behind the artistic process and how it is supposed to work. Art, the portrayal of an idea, is valid because it is in service of a higher principle, and it is that principle, that idea, which is the end that leads to a new beginning. Which brings us to the opponent of art…
Anti-Art
What is Anti-art? It is that which appears like art on the outside, which follows the Expression and Revelation portions of art, but which has as its intention the negation of any higher principle behind artistic portrayal. Three principles define Anti-Art, Art an end in itself, the lack of Genius, and the Mono Idea. Anti-Art may be present where any one of these principles is found, and it is certainly found where two or more are present.
Art as An End in Itself.
The most prominent flaw in modern pop culture is the embrace of artistic pieces as self referential ends in and of themselves. Art can never be separated from the idea that it seeks to represent without losing its purpose, the reason it was brought into existence. When the trappings and stylizations of art eclipse or veil the original idea, then the representation itself becomes the purpose and the end. Art derived from this representation are just representations themselves, contributing to a loop absent of meaning.
Consider, for example, the obsession with rote trivia and character appearances in the most vapid type of pop culture. The core idea, that which made such art popular to begin with, has been eclipsed by the design and details which were supposed to serve the idea. A particularly strong form of this occurs when fans cannot even even identify the core idea behind the characters and franchises they obsess about.
From here it is a short step to consumer culture, where the fellowship is not based on the admiration and appreciation of an idea, but upon obsession with artistic presentation.
This concept transcends what we normally conceive of as franchises. The issue of knock-off fashion brands, for example, occur because the trappings of the brand itself become more important than the issue of quality. In the art world, there are many imitative products out there which have little creative originality about them. To spot one of these products masquerading as art, simply perform the following test when absorbing a piece of media: Is the art you are viewing trying to say anything, or does it exist to style itself off another idea without further exploring that idea?
It is here that one sees the face of reboot culture. Modern corporate “art” is currently designed with the intention of creating eternal franchises which can be recycled, changed, and rebooted for years to come. Instead of being artistic ideas that stand on their own, the purpose becomes the creation of outside appearances and references that can be adapted for whatever work the company desires. One need only cite the multitude of “unnecessary sequels” to demonstrate the anti-artistic nature of this conception. Indeed, many sequels have a tendency to ruin or disvalue the original idea by removing the intended end or cheapening its potency.
Art without Genius
At the core of every piece of art is an idea. One can call that idea many things, but it was often known as Genius in the Greco-Roman world, a derivative from the word for creation. Art by its nature does not have to be entirely original. Indeed, the vast majority of art is inspired by that which came before, whether from the natural world or artists before. However, as art there must still be some sort of genius involved in this type of work which takes inspiration from the previous idea. If this idea further explores the original idea, it can be considered a successor work. If it is a critique of the original idea, it can be called a deconstruction.
What happens when there is no true genius behind a work? This is where one enters a realm where an artistic idea is not explored, but instead subverted and used for another purpose.
For example, let’s take the example of an artistically baseless product, the “funko-pop”. This is a brand which has made its entire existence about representing pop culture characters as generic similarly designed blobs of plastic. They don’t even have the functional excuse of being used as toys (which could become props for the imagination of children), since they are intended as sculptures to be displayed. Much of the time one cannot even tell which character the supposed sculpture is supposed to represent without the associated branding and name tag being present. There is no genius behind these derivative products, only a vague representation sold on references. Thus one is left with a product which uses the process of artistry in its design, but which possesses none of the actual purpose.
Many branded products fall under this lack of artistic genius. One might cite the endless amount of branded clothing, useless trinkets, and other merchandise that fans of franchises and brands alike are supposed to consume. Star Wars historically developed into a particularly rotten example of this merchandising, being one of the first pop culture franchises to truly capitalize on it. One can cite the absurdity of things like Yoda cereal, a Darth Vader toaster, or a Death Star popcorn machine (and yes, all three of these things are products that really exist). With Yoda cereal, the character is being used as nothing more than an advertising gimmick, one which implies that if you like the character, then you will like the product. After all, the portrayed character looks like the character you like, why, the illustration might even be well done. However, the representation is being used absent of the artistic idea behind it, a reference which has become the end in itself. Similarly, what does it say when a character, one once intended to represent a lethal villain, is turned into a mere appliance? How can reducing a character to an advertising gimmick for a device do anything but cheapen what the character originally represented? Worse still, there is no way that such an appliance fits in with the aesthetic of a house, so it is even artistically violating in that sense. In the case of a Death Star popcorn maker, do I even need to explain why turning a fictional mass genocide weapon into an appliance is anti-artistic absurdity? Worse still, most popular franchises are run with this exact same mindset, each creating an endless stream of this sort of artless representation, and, if the internet is anything to go on, there seems to be numerous fans which have wholeheartedly embraced this shallow consumer mindset.
This consumerism is what corporate-speak means when it talks about creating “Lifestyle Brands.” It is the appropriation of pop culture franchises into an endless quantity of branded goods which fans are then expected to consume en masse and identify with, in order to display brand loyalty. The most blatant example of this is probably sports franchises (which wish for people, who have no actual participatory role in a team, to root for them). And most sports franchises are not even made up of local participants, consisting of people imported from across a country, or even from around the world. Thus, one is not actually supporting the local team, one is supporting a brand which is only incidentally made up of certain players. This Lifestyle brand loyalty, having cultivated a sort of dopamine fuelled fanaticism in its adherents, can be further used for sociological manipulation when brands (or spokesmen for brands, such as corporate music stars with carefully crafted public personas) “take a stand” on social issues (something we’ll get into much later when talking about the ideology of consumerism).
The Mono Idea
Examining history, it is evident that one social mindset leads to the greatest decline of artistry, the Mono Idea. The Mono Idea describes a situation where a society mandates a single ideology, in belief and practice. For example, there was an extreme decline of art from the end of the Roman Empire up until the Renaissance. Why was this? Well, the Greco-Roman world was one in which many ideas were exchanged. Thus, a great amount of different interpretations about the world, both philosophic and religious, competed with one another to attract followers. Sects sponsored elaborate art and rituals in order to draw adherents to them, and this in turn influenced the nobles and wealthy people who acted as the patrons of these groups.
However, when Christianity took over the Roman Empire it quickly solidified itself as a Mono Idea. Differing Christian sects were labelled as heretics, Jews were pushed into ghettos, and Pagans were outright exterminated, with their temples and sacred art being outright destroyed, whether through mob violence (allowed by hostile governing elites) or political mandates. The end result was a single entity left in charge, which forcefully sought to standardize itself by silencing unauthorized religious opinions. This is where the innumerable heresies and theological disputes of Christianity, typically speculative and creative ideas with little textual evidence for or against them, resulted in legally backed up penalties such as fines and censorship, exile, or even death. The filioque controversy, which is the argument over whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from God the Father and God the Son (the Catholic view), or from God the Father alone (the Eastern Orthodox view), is typical of these controversies. The entire argument rests on the interpretation of a few contradictory verses, is something that makes absolutely no practical difference from the perspective of humans, and yet was enough to forge a great divide between the eastern and western churches.
The end result of legally mandating an official church was that only a single entity was left to control philosophy and religion. This entity became the Catholic Church in the West and Eastern Orthodoxy in the Greek world, later the proxy churches of the Holy Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire respectively. Similar occurrences can be cited in the expanse of Islam, most famously started when Mohamed smashed the alters and images of the Arab gods and goddesses, reducing a religion of 100+ deities to one. Languages such as that of the Egyptians were simply replaced with Arabic. And though, like Christianity in the original empire, that society had a brief golden age entered by having gathered the ideas of Egypt, Babylon, Persia, and Greece into itself, the decline into artistic irrelevancy was only a matter of time. Even Buddhism, upon conquering areas of Asia, forced the locals to accept the supremacy of the Buddha over their Gods (though, as this was a less thorough project than that of Christianity and Islam, it never quite reached a Mono Idea status socially speaking.)
It is notable that the artistic impulse for advancement in Medieval Christianity came from internal opponents, the exact sort of opposition that Islamic societies never received. Elaborate churches and cathedrals were built by the famed Freemason guilds, entities known to take inspiration from the esoteric parts of Greco-Roman culture. Similarly, the merchant guilds of Italy (which can be considered the precursors to modern companies) began the scientific and cultural advancements of the Renaissance, with the initial impulse being the interaction of Byzantine Greek/Middle Eastern culture and the revival of ancient Greco-Roman traditions. Around that same time period, the political elites of northern Europe decided to embrace Protestantism as a means of separating themselves from Papal authority. Thus, with all the new competition around, it is little wonder that the most famous pieces of Catholic art were produced during and after the Renaissance.
Moving to modern times, one sees this same tendency to the degradation of art in any authoritarian society. In George Orwell’s essay, Politics and the English Language, he notes that even the art of language itself declines under the reign of authoritarian societies:
“In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a “party line.” Orthodoxy, or whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestos, White Papers and the speeches of under-secretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, home-made turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases – bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder – one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance towards turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And thus reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fie with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider, for instance, some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, ‘I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.’ Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
‘While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.
The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. Where there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were instinctively, to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics.” All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find – this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify – that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years as a result of dictatorship.”
George Orwell – Politics and the English Language
“A lifeless, imitative style,” does that call to mind the endless imitators of callous MCU snark humor in modern day media, wherein every serious plot is trivialized with juvenile jokes? How about social media, ever aflame with linguistic degradation? Everything is full of juvenile obsessions with terms like fuck/fucking, shit, and piss. None of these words actually aid as descriptors of whatever follows them, instead they only serve as thoughtless words used as emotional signifiers.
Or how about corporate pop music. In the current day, the form of pop music with the greatest fandom are artificially manufactured groups that one sees in K-pop, J-pop, and some Western popular music. These groups are notoriously made up of performers artificially placed in groups by corporations. Their music, lyrics, and gimmicks are all artificially designed by corporations, with even their acting personas being the result of careful crafting rather than any sort of real portrayal. Music and song, once the domain of intensely personal feelings and drives, is reduced to artificiality and fakeness, covered over with bombastic tones.
Similarly, how about the way that the corporate media constantly glorifies the worst elements of African-American culture, promoting drugs, materialism, a callous disregard for long term relationships, and the glorification of gang violence to a culture already deeply troubled by such elements? And when the outside world thinks of African-American culture (one with layers of complexity, as any culture has), this often becomes the first thing they imagine about it. And of course, one could cite any number of African-American musical culture, such as jazz, classic pop, rock, blues, gospel, or traditional African music, each of which offers a much better experience than the corporate pop-cult.
Allow me to give you an anecdote on this matter for illustrative purposes. During the summer 2020, when everything was going down in the states, I had pulled up in front of a grocery store and another vehicle pulled up beside me. In it was a typical Caucasian woman, who I would estimate to be 40-50, with glasses and brown hair dyed blond (you know the type). Anyways, she’s “blasting” corporate rap as loudly as someone middle age would, with the windows down. And then I realize what’s going on. This woman, by “blaring” meaningless corporate rap, actually believed that she was making a statement. (No, I did not interact with her at all, I just enjoyed the absurdity of the moment, then went about my business.)
If trends like this in the developed “free” world can be put in place by corporate media, one can only imagine how the effects of a true Mono Idea society, such as North Korea or Cuba, must weigh on people. Citizens, constantly repressed and controlled, unable to express ideas and thoughts, eventually give in and became uncreative dullards, moving mechanically to the gears of state and society.
And so one can see that the Mono Idea truly takes shape in the confinement of creativity by the tools of degrading language and thought itself. Thus, things which appear inherently artistic, language, movies, books, etc. become the interpretive veil over reality. It is not enough to exist, one must also interpret existence according to the dogmas of the day and act accordingly. And art turns to the service of rote and petty moralism or ethical guidelines, which replace complex thoughts with platitudes and commandments.
Small examples of this mindset occur every day in institutions across the world. How many classrooms have teachers and professors who only wish to hear echo chambers? How many corporate heads decide to mandate and ban forms of art and language, despite having no knowledge of such matters?
What is the Mono Idea? The Mono Idea is the violent concept. By nature it must set itself against all else in the world, seeing everything through the lens of the Friend-Enemy distinction. Ultimately, such an idea must result in the purge of that which could threaten it, creativity, the path of the Creators.
What Anti-Art is Not
Deconstruction
Many people today link deconstruction of ideas with the concept of Anti-Art, and in a sense it is not hard to see why this is the case. Much of what passes for deconstruction is driven by a sort of malicious cynicism, one which is no longer longer capable of seeing joy or wonder in things, only exploitation. However, at its core deconstruction is about a critical examination and testing of an idea. It does not, by nature, enter into an idea with the explicit purpose of destroying it, rather or seeing whether it can stand up to an examination. Satire and parody are good examples of deconstruction, frequently exaggerating portions of a work for the purposes of comedy. Where Anti-Art meets the concept of deconstruction is that many modern cynical “deconstructions” rely upon creating false images of what something is, and then gleefully tearing them down, replacing them with images that are as hollow as the strawmen they first erected.
Derivative Ideas and Concepts
As I’ve noted previously, virtually all art is ultimately derived from something else, whether as an explicit successor or simply as something that took inspiration from another idea. This is why the concept of artistic tropes exists, since one can readily see patterns that repeat themselves in art. Ultimately derivative art is one possibility that emerges when one is inspired by an idea. It is less creative than art which attempts to be original, as it confines itself to the established trappings of a setting or characters, however that does not mean it is void of any new idea.
Wrong/Misguided Ideas
Finally, Anti-Art is not the representation of wrong ideas, or representations created with bad motivations. Humans are a contradictory bunch when talking about the nature of truth and beauty. As the old adage goes, place two people in a room and you’ll get three different opinions. This tendency towards individuality only grows as one gets more creative, introspective, and thoughtful. Not to mention that the opinions one holds often change over time, sometimes quite radically.
Every philosopher has something in their teachings that contradicts that of every other philosopher. To be sure, there are many points of agreement, however this just shows that humans don’t know everything, and thus everyone has differing opinions. Even the religions which claim to have canonical scriptures have a multitude of different and contradictory interpretations by religious authorities.
There is also the point that not everything has to be a matter of right and wrong. Many things can be left up to interpretation depending on which elements one wishes to show. For example, when painting a scene in nature, one might choose to bring out the way that sunlight interacts with the scenery, as though everything was a portrait painted by light. Others might prefer to bring out the shadows in a scene, as though emphasizing the constant battle between differing principles. Neither is incorrect, they both simply draw from different characteristics of a complex system.
Conclusion
Such is the way of Art and Anti-Art, their definitions and tendencies. Next time I will discuss the history of how pop culture developed.
Kotharian Lightning 