A short but artsome rant

Learning about the 15th century Flemish painter Jan van Eyck, I wonder what happened to art these days. Looking at The Ghent Altarpiece, I question civilization. Knowing you’re probably googling it right now, I guess books and galleries are dead.

The very fact that spell-check underlines Eyck as a mistake catapults us back to the Stone Age.

Standing on the sidewalk and observing all the graffiti, I can’t help feeling there is no real art left in this world.

I take my camera and photograph every obscure and unimportant thing I can think of. If I can’t think of anything, I just take pictures of trees and clouds. Two hundred photos is all my memory card can handle.

I keep fifteen of them.

Fifteen pictures out of two hundred that I present to others. That’s 7.5% of my work that’s worth showing to people. Approximately one thirteenth of my work that’s not laughable. Embarrassing.

People see these pictures and they think, Wow, this guy is an artist.

Yeah, sure I am. Because Michelangelo had to do thirteen statues before he got it right, too.

Then I borrow a handycam and I shoot stuff. Everything safe for the plastic bag in the wind. Then I put it on youtube and suddenly I’m an artsy filmmaker. I get comments like, Wow, this is good. This reminds me of (insert any director you like).

What’s sad is that instead of becoming an artist, all you become is just another person with a Mac and a camera, but you still think you’re the next best thing.

Oh yeah, and speaking of Mac, all people can do is bitch and moan about Microsoft, but hey, why don’t you start your own multi-billion corporation from scratch?

I hate it how those MacBooks are all white. They look like a compressed fridge.

But seriously, now that I’m a photographer and a cinematographer, I can progress further. With the -grapher bases covered, my next step is becoming a musician.

What I do is I learn to play the guitar just good enough to be able to make a demo. My singing is no good, but I hide it by covering a Beatles song and writing my own stuff easy.

The lyrics make little to no sense, but they include the words love, God, Iraq war, and my mother, so I guess I’m gonna be alright.

And if that doesn’t work, I can still have a sex scandal.

You think Mozart was just plain good? Oh please. I bet he fucked half of Vienna before he became famous.

Oh right. He was six years old. My bad.

The problem with art is that it’s not defined properly. You say art when you see a Monet painting, but you also say art when you see spray paint on a wall. OK, technically you’d call it street art, but I bet you can see how the key word is not “street” right now.

To become a painter, all you have to do these days is dump a bucket of paint on a canvas and add some straight lines. Maybe a circle. It takes about ten minutes, but it’s immortal.

Ever wondered how long it took van Eyck to paint the bleeding lamb on the altar?

Ever seen it?

I guess what I’m doing right now is I’m becoming a writer. I already became everything else, so why not do the easiest one, too?

The fact that I’m posting this on the internet and thinking how clever I am just proves my point that everyone being able to express themselves is basically what killed art.

I mean, in a couple centuries, this is hardly going to be quoted as often as Shakespeare is now. The to be’s and not to be’s of this time can be found on lame blogs like this one, smartass icons and banners, clever T-shirts, text messages, doors of toilet cabins.

Everyone is an artist, which means no one is.