Mom and the Pop Life: Is All Art Pretentious?

Look at this piece of art above. It's 'modern' and I found it by doing a google search under futuristic art. To me, this particular piece symbolizes how I feel so very often when I think of the media, pop culture, technology and the chaos that is in our daily lives from information overload. It tells me that although we have all of this information, we have yet to find out how we are going to use it. We have technological tools and we have advanced medicine but we can't figure out how to allocate the resources efficiently. We are limited by our own humanity. This generation has the grand task of figuring it all out, protecting our children from open access to inappropriate information and the media attacking us from all angles.

Anyhoo, that's my take on it. ;) What's yours?

The inspiration of this post comes from thinking about art as an ideal. Is art pretentious as a rule? Can it be something more meaningful? Is it a fantasy world thought up by 'crazy' and 'eccentric' people that will never matter to society? If that is true, why do pieces of art throughout the beginning of man take up thousands of square feet at museums?

Also, the definition of an artist can mean two things today. One is sometimes called a 'puppet', an industry pawn controlled by a team of entertainment professionals at Record Labels, Music Production Companies, A&R Representatives, Public Relations Firms and paying lots of money to get people on the radio. Those people are usually mainstream. The other artist is the 'avante garde' artist. This is the artist that is 'breaking boundaries' and is a free spirit. They are rebellious, sometimes in a 'whoah that's weird' kind of way and sometimes they are 'whoah, that is 'so fierce and badass'. They say and do things for 'shock' value and they 'break boundaries' and everyone 'underground' thinks they are awesome. Sometimes those people cross over to mainstream, usually with the help of a team that figures out how to turn them into a product.

Either way, these artists are pretentious and contrived. The media sells them like they are 'new', they are the definition of talent and so much goes into justifying the fact that they make music and want to entertain. The media goes on to explain how because they 'won this contest' or because they 'wrote a song for Justin Beiber or Kesha', they are hot and cool. Because of these things, we should just accept this artist, induct them into stardom immediately, and 'buy into' everything they're selling.

The justification of everything is what's frustrating. It's contrived and being sold as 'a truth'. How about if you have talent, just make some good music? How about instead of being concerned with how much people are going to kiss your arse, how about making music that is going to get me through my day?

There are some artists that are enjoyable today, no doubt. It is the mayhem that is created on the artists superiority over human life that is so frustrating.

The ability to make music is no more special than anything else that people have talent for. Only the best music should make people stand up and take notice and that's where the focus should be on.

Make your rebellious music, do it on purpose but if you do it, remember that anyone listening is not seeing how 'groundbreaking' you are. You are providing a service and a product. Until you realize that you are a pawn in other rebellious person's life, you are a puppet with strings pulled by 'The Man'.

Pop is Best served up as a side dish to life.

Christine Sebastian

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