Tate Modern…Art?

I can’t stand modernism. In my personal opinion, it is almost entirely pretension wrapped in good marketing. Meaningless works with value attached only by scotch tape and the words of “artists” “art critics” and other rich snobs and con artists looking for a dollar. Some good art sneaks through by sheer force of luck, and the performative ideologies of those willing to make dollars on the artists’ pennies. In my opinion, art is not a commodity, unlike a painting. Modernism is the feigning of ideas, value, skill, meaning, and whatever else have you, for the sake of social and monetary status. It is snake oil sales, doublespeak, and at best is a lesson on how to pay close attention to that man behind the curtain. Because his tricks are not a happy ending Dorothy, they are LITERALLY A F#@&!NG URINAL

After my ranting about a man who took a urinal, signed it, and called it art and managed to ruin what modern art could have been, leading to thousands of pieces of work barely worth being printed on a coffee cup or t shirt and just as many artists trying to one up the guy who taped a banana to a wall and sold it for thousands. Honestly, some of this garbage could be art to me, if it weren’t so tied up in its millions of dollars and made up meanings.

There are so many people convinced that a canvas with one or two colored squares on it is worth so so much (and ill admit it does look cool but it is not millions), and others working to keep up the lie by tacking on more and more “it’s about capitalism (society, poverty, the nation, sexuality, the human experience, or whatever else they can come up with)” stickers and pricing it at a million, it just becomes exhausting at some point. The saddest part is when real artists either get lumped in with the rest or get nowhere when the modern art industrial complex didn’t want them. With what could be done in modern times, modern art could mean so much more (and that’s easy when the bar was set on the ground and only sunk further since). It would be nice if half of it meant anything at all. Support local art, question everything, and find your own meaning in things if you can. Like I said earlier, this was my opinion. Everyone has one. Art is your own. Art is culture and humanity. To be human is to be both art and the artist.

-Ulrich Abroad