The art essay
Art comprises an integral part of the social life and people often appreciate art but often they are not even aware of the fact that they are dealing with art, for example, as they watch a print ad, which can be a form of art, but the audience perceives it just like the ad. On the other hand, artists perceive their art as a form of the communication with the audience. They try to convey their ideas to the audience by means of their creative work. In such a situation, the possibility of influencing the audience emerges. However, art does not have as overwhelming impact as one may expect it has. On the contrary, art may remain misunderstood, if the audience does not understand the form and message the artist wants to convey to the audience. Therefore, it is a widely-spread misconception that art can change society through genius works of art, which make the audience to change their worldview, for example. What is more important, art, being unable to change the audience consistently, has to adapt to the audience’s needs and wants that, although, may cause the degradation of art. In fact, the impossibility of the art strike leads to the amateurization of art, when artists, being unable to change the public consciousness try to adapt to dominant cultural trends, even though they degrade the high art.
The artistic “avant-garde” has always been associated with a radical attempt to transform society politically through formal and social interventions into art and its institutions (Saloman, 2014, 1). Artists attempted to convey their ideas to the public and make people changing their worldview. In fact, it seems to be the natural intention of an artist to share his/her ideas with the audience and make the audience following him/her. “Avant-garde” artists were the most progressive mainly because they have more progressive ideas and, therefore, they expected to change society by means of their art, which could have changed views and beliefs of people but they have failed to reach the mass effect.
Artistic interventions have at times modeled themselves after political formations from other spheres in an attempt to reproduce similar structural reforms and to forge alliances between artists and other groups of radicalized subjects (Saloman, 2014, 1). For example, the rise of the modernism on the turn of the centuries was driven by the turbulent epoch, when revolutions and wars affected many nations. In such a situation, artists naturally attempted to share their ideas with the audience and some of them believed that they could offer the audience ideas and values that could change the life of society. However, the radicalization of art is different from radicalization of ideas or society because radicalization of art leads to the misunderstanding of such art by the audience.
As attempts of artists to change society have failed, they have started to change their art and, thus, the art has started considerable changes, especially since the mid-20th century. The high art undergoes the transformation, which Sholette compares to the fall of the high art down to amateur art, when the art acquires the status of a hobby. Sholelte also points out that among the fallen artists are those who sought to represent working class life with compassion and candor as well as more cerebrally oriented practitioners who endeavored to reveal and subvert the ideological tropes of mass culture (Sholette, 2). The downshift of the high art to the hobby art is the process of amateurization of art, where artists refuse from the use of the high art, which is incomprehensible for the mass audience and not interesting for the average viewer. Instead, they try to create new, unexpected forms of art and approaches that catch the attention of viewers and help artists to convey their ideas to the audience more clearly.
The amateurization of art implies the widening gap between the high art and popular art, because the amateurized art is closer to the average people and more comprehensible to them. Therefore, the question that begs refers to the major drivers of such a change because it is unclear why artists agree to shift their art down from the high art, as the ultimate artistic form of the superior manifestation of artist’s vision, ideas and beliefs by means of an artistic form, to the amateurized art, which is intentionally simplified but closer to the audience. In this regard, the answer is the target audience of artists and the change of the target audience. As Saloman justly noticed the art strike is immensely impossible because the audience does not perceive art, especially in its complicated forms, as a powerful social movement. The audience is not willing to study the art so profoundly that the average viewers could understand the most complicated artistic forms. Instead, the audience is looking for simple, comprehensible but interesting art forms and works. This is why amateurization of art becomes so popular because artists can use unusual but interesting artistic forms to convey their messages to the audience in a simplified but still artistic way.
At the same time, the current trend to the amateurization of art is actually the result of profound socio-cultural changes in the modern society because people have shifted from the appreciation of the high art, which was virtually a norm a century ago, for example, to the appreciation of art as a mere form of entertainment with the focus on the amateurized art, which is more amusing compared to high art and comprehensible for the general public. Today, art have become closer to the public but it has ceased to be the high art.
Therefore, artists change and adapt their art respectively to the audience’s needs and wants, instead of changing the public. In such a context, Saloman’s idea of the impossibility of the art strikes proves to be right but such impossibility inevitably least to the degradation of art and its amateurization or simplification to match the target audience knowledge, background, expectations and needs. In fact, what makes the high art different from the amateurized art and art that turns out to be submissive to the audience’s wants and needs is that the high art should have the power to change the public, instead of changing itself. However, today, there is little room for high art, while the public grows more and more accustomed to amateurization of art and its simplification.
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