After the break imposed by the album release (and other things of utmost importance), The End series continues.

The art… Among other things, the art has been the way for the humans to express their emotions, ideas and feelings. It has been an outlet for anybody, regardless of skills. It has always been beyond the daily routine, even when the latter was the subject. Peaceful in its essence, it has been in the centre of countless conflicts and the object of desire for all with the ruling ambitions. It has no single incarnation, it is anything our mind makes it to be. Art is probably the only human creation to truly fight our omnipotent arch nemesis — the time.

Yet the art has its own arch nemesis, and one with an agenda hard to fathom — the humanity. The very humanity that has created this outlet for the by-products of its cerebral mezzanine. Omnipotent by the fact that the art only exists as long as we exist either to create or admire it, we are mistreating this gift, taking it for granted.

We have come full circle, in a way. Once leaving the emotions command our body for a short while and led by imagination set the earthly concerns aside and create something out of nothing. Now, we are trying to control these emotions and imagination in order to best adapt them to the aforementioned concerns. Once driven by the inspiration alone, now all forms of art seem to become invaded by the hit potential, public appeal, niche, format, style, and target audience. While it is undoubtedly inevitable in the society as we know it, the extent to which these factors have taken importance seems disproportionate. Of course, all artists want their work to be appreciated by as many people as possible, but actually crafting the artworks for this purpose alone goes beyond artistic integrity and the whole essence of artistic expression.

The scientific research found that the public want more action in films? Well, let us drop the exposition altogether and cut straight to the chase, saving on opening credits too. The survey shows that the majority loves witless dance tunes? Let us fire all acts that offer anything other than the Friday night blow-off-steam bonanza. The in-depth art sales analysis states that abstract art is what appeals the most? Why, let us fill the galleries with these number one sellers and take the rest out to save valuable space. The sorcerer stories are fashionable again? Time to publish those fifteen mediocre novels we have in stock. And so on, and so forth…

It may look not as bad, being an obvious exaggeration, but where does it leave us in reality? It feels like a world with a limited choice, where the tastes are governed by the sales managers and commerce secretaries. A world where advance is all but encouraged and the experimentation has more road blocks than escalators on its way. Certainly, there are “bastions of artistic freedom, expression and innovation,” but in the end, those too are following established norms from which none is ready to stray. The films have to be dead slow, the music atonal and the paintings repulsive. The alternative culture has become a parody of itself, too.

Once intended to express, educate, provoke and stimulate, the art has become a service. A lowly service, at that; the one that has to adapt to the taste and has no say. A service that no one respects. A service so superfluous that in this world of pauper’s financial opulence the consumer no longer feels the need to pay for it.

Who is to blame? I guess all of us. The artists who let the studio bosses dictate the directions, the at-the-top ones who let the commercial clerks make the artistic choices, the public who let this trio adrift carry it along into the whirlpool of self-indulgence, and the vox populi orators who point fingers in all the wrong directions. Art is our handiwork (albeit as an atom – too powerful to rest well in our hands), it is up to us alone to model this wonderful invention.

Though, what if instead of snubbing and attacking the declining mainstream we fought our best to raise the bar of what is à la mode? What if we realised that the way to do it is not by closing down in an elitist niche that requires special auspices to enter? This segmentation leads to the niche becoming stagnant without the fresh influx of ideas, and eventually, it ends up a slump as the mainstream it once left. What if we, as artists, were to try and look at ourselves with a little more objectivity and be a little more modest? By being modest I mean really modest and not “modest unlike that other group of artists.” What if we were to work our best to improve our art and let the others’ work influence us throughout our life? What if the “elite” art were to drop its passive-aggressive behaviour and the “people’s art” were to respect itself a little more? What if we were all to drop the chase for immediate satisfaction and look at the bigger picture once in a while?

What if we were to stop trying to bring the end of art? For what we really are ending is ourselves.

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