In this episode of The Oren McIntyre Show, host Oren talks with art aficionado John D. Dunne about the idea that art may be reaching the end of its life cycle and the possibility of it re-emerging in a new form.
00:02:28.140So I am, strangely enough, what you call a professional artist, which is a slightly ambiguous term these days.
00:02:34.360But, you know, I produce and I have done for many, many years.
00:02:38.780I've produced what's called plastic arts, you know, the sort of things that you can see and touch and sort of walk around and experience.
00:02:46.640So I but I, you know, I mainly do painting, image making of that sort, drawing, print making, sculpture occasionally.
00:02:53.720So, you know, and, you know, and display and sell at a commercial gallery.
00:02:59.700And, you know, I've just generally been involved in all forms of art for for a very long time.
00:03:05.580So so those are my sort of bona fides regarding this this topic.
00:03:10.580But it is of general interest to me, and particularly, I think, with conversations that I see going on in various spheres, you know, people writing in the various sort of magazines and journals and sub stacks talking about the role of culture, you know, in our sort of civilization, you know, particularly in modernity and postmodernity and the role of culture in political spaces as well.
00:03:32.760So, yeah, this is, you know, this is a sort of subject that does greatly interest me.
00:03:37.820Yeah, you're definitely somebody who has the practical application.
00:03:41.360You've been an artist, you've made a living on that.
00:03:43.820You're somebody who's commented on, critiqued and also understood the wider context.
00:03:48.200So that's definitely why I wanted to dive into the topic with you today.
00:03:52.760Before we get to the meat of the discussion, though, guys, let's hear from today's sponsor.
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00:05:00.720Well, Mr. D, you're the expert here, so I'll throw out some questions and let you take this discussion and kind of inform it into the structure that you'd prefer.
00:05:09.400Like I said at the beginning here, we had a large number of Hollywood blockbusters, and they were originally named blockbusters because there was so much demand on seeing them that literally the lines would go out around the block.
00:05:24.320Something like Star Wars or Indiana Jones, these were big movies, and yes, they had large budgets, but they were pretty infrequent.
00:05:33.020Most movies that were put into the cinema were not these massive affairs with, you know, now obviously the modern budgets, you have hundreds of millions of dollars on a regular basis just for the making of movies.
00:05:44.560Don't even talk about the marketing. You could easily hit four or five hundred million dollars when it comes to making a movie.
00:05:51.720Now, originally, like I said, these were spaced out, and this was a big deal.
00:05:55.340It was kind of appointment viewing. You had these smaller movies throughout the year, the 20, 30 million dollar movies, but then the blockbusters would come out, these big action set pieces, and they would completely dominate the movie landscape during the summer.
00:06:09.300Now, the studio model seems to be entirely centered on blockbusters.
00:06:14.780It's like the only thing they think that can ultimately be profitable or profitable enough for them to probably get a raise somewhere or get elevated into a different position.
00:06:25.180And so this is what it seems like our movie industry has settled on, and the result has been a large number of movies that ultimately don't go anywhere despite having these massive budgets allocated to them.
00:06:38.880Do you think that this is just some part of, I guess, the superhero Marvel burnout of these big action movies?
00:06:47.640Do you think it says something about the movie industry in general, or are we actually seeing the kind of the decline of the movie as a format, as something that reliably everyone plugs into with the rise of YouTube and all these other formats?
00:07:03.440Could it be that the movie, like many other art styles over their time, has just kind of reached the end of its arc?
00:07:10.960I think it's a complex question, because, you know, of course, there are a lot of factors that go into this.
00:07:20.400I mean, obviously, you know, I think, you know, if you want to sort of take it down to a fundamental level, it is, of course, the nature of the culture, the nature of the civilization that both produces art, you know, the art form, and also the ones who consume it, who watch it, you know.
00:07:39.380And so I think that, of course, you know, we've seen extraordinary changes in, you know, the nature and the sort of tenor of our civilization over the past, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50 so odd years.
00:07:53.560And so that's certainly going to be the kind of baseline that's going to inform, you know, how these things affect people, how are people able to make them, how people watch them, what they mean to people.
00:08:04.700Now, of course, you know, in a kind of, you know, kind of higher level, I do think that, you know, the way that people kind of think about cinema, consume cinema, you know, of course, obviously, so many things have gone from external to the home to internal, you know, to internal to the home, you know, so people are staying indoors, you know, staying in their own spaces much more than, you know, than they used to.
00:08:34.680But yes, I do think also, you have the situation where Hollywood is no longer kind of centered in American culture, you know, that they're thinking now, as so many other industries are thinking about, you know, the global market, they're like, well, how do we appeal?
00:08:54.980You know, we don't just want to appeal to Americans, we don't want to appeal to, you know, that to a lesser degree, the continental European market, whatever, we want to appeal to China, we want to appeal to India, we want to appeal to these, you know, Southeast Asia, whatever these broad swathes of humanity.
00:09:10.180And of course, how do you do that, you know, I mean, you think about, you know, a film, think about a film from the past, like, I don't know, Marilyn Monroe film, The Seven Year Itch.
00:09:22.060Well, how would that film sort of specifically relate to the average Chinese film audience today, you know, and so I think that obviously that there would have been an ability for other people to enter into these products of American culture.
00:09:41.320But now, I think the people producing them, that they're no longer thinking at all, you know, in this way, they're just thinking about, what are the numbers that is going to be able to justify these enormous bloated productions, you know, and I do think also, as you say, I mean, this sort of superhero genre, you know, the nature of a film that is meant to be a blockbuster, is has also changed, you know, and so, you know, people expect
00:10:08.620A giant production. And of course, that's very expensive. And again, how are you going to make those numbers work? So I do think there's a lot of things feeding in this sort of erosion that we've seen, but, but yeah, certainly, you know, and also, I just, I just, I just think certainly that there is a situation that happens where the creative people in a culture become stuck, you know, they, you know, we do get waves of inspiration and, and, and, and then
00:10:38.620Non-inspiration that come and go. And so it may also be that we're, we're in an age where, you know, where the divine muse has not blessed our writers and filmmakers and such with, with these ideas. But I think it's a big pot full of things that are kind of causing the stew to, to go sour.
00:10:57.420Yeah, there's a couple of interesting factors you pointed out there that I'd like to pick out just a little bit before, you know, we don't have to spend the whole time on movies, but I do find kind of the, the issues that you enumerated. They're interesting. The first one being obviously the shift to home markets, right? It used to be that you had like this 19 inch TV with a, you know, a VCR attached or, you know, maybe a 25 inch or something.
00:11:25.980It's a relatively small screen. It probably needed a lot of work to, to play a video of decent fidelity. You still weren't getting the kind of audio today. You have much larger televisions, surround sounds, much higher quality transfers in formats that you can bring home.
00:11:44.460The movie going experience has closed the space between the home release and the theatrical release. So the six months or a year that normally a film would be exclusive to theaters can now be just a few weeks or a few cases the same day.
00:12:00.860Though I think Warner Brothers specifically learned the dangers of releasing simultaneously as they had a number of their large comic book movies flop because you could just watch them for free or for the, the subscription service you're already paying at home as opposed to going out to buy a ticket.
00:12:16.800So that's a big part of it. Another big part of it is, uh, simply people don't feel safe. Don't feel, uh, that they are comfortable in large public settings. There's, I think a, a degrading of the cultural fabric. Uh, and when the social fabric like that degrades, uh, you have clashing cultures in any given movie theater.
00:12:38.720Am I going to have to worry about getting in a fight with somebody, somebody going to be on their phone the whole time, playing some music through a Bluetooth speaker, you know, yelling at the screen. These are all things that, you know, if you don't have a culture that's kind of stretched to its limits, you're less worried about. But when people are constantly worried about the type of social interactions they might run into in those corporate settings, people are less likely to venture out and involve themselves ultimately, uh, with the art that you're talking about.
00:13:07.420And then finally, uh, the fact that these movies are made for these larger markets means that there's very little attention paid to the specifics of producing something that really speaks to specifically say an American audience or UK audience or, you know, an Italian audience.
00:13:25.280And instead they're just trying to get this global capture. So you have a movie like, uh, I think the Warcraft movie was famously just garbage in the United States, uh, and not a great movie in general, but kind of the shiny,
00:13:37.200blinky lights made it do very well in China. And so even though it would have been a disaster had it only been released here in the United States by aiming towards the Chinese market, they ensured a profitable session.
00:13:48.640And so there's really this mixture of format switching, which really dulls, I think the magic of the cinematic, uh, theater experience, uh, and the fact that ultimately the incentive structure seems to be rather than investing in 20 or $30 million movies and see if you can produce a decent profit, just taking these giant risks at every turn, everything's 200, 300,
00:14:18.640wide enough. Ultimately we're going to recoup that if not in the United States somewhere else.
00:14:25.860Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a very good point you make about, of course, just the experience of going to the cinema, because of course you, you get sort of moral questions, you know, there's questions about the kind of health of, of a civilization of, of a, you know, of your country, of your town, you know, so no longer, I mean, I think part of being,
00:14:44.800going to the cinema was also the experience of being in an audience of, of people who were more or less like you, you know, you, you, you were sharing an experience of, you know, you were sharing a sort of, uh, you know, theatrical experience with people who were generally up from the same culture, who had the same sort of cultural values, the same understandings of etiquette in public spaces, you know,
00:15:11.340there was a kind of a slightly more of a formality to it, depending on the type of film, you know, if you went to a children's film in the 1940s, then you were going to get a riotous children's atmosphere.
00:15:22.540You know, if you went to a, you know, you went to a grownup film, then you would get, you were going to get that experience. And now, of course, as you say, you have no idea what you're getting into, you know, you, you, you know, you, you, you could, you could even, even be in danger, you know, in terms of that there could be criminal elements, there are fights, there's all sorts of things that happen.
00:15:40.280Uh, you don't know where, you know, where people are, you know, going to be out of their head on drugs. You don't know where there's going to be this or that happening. So, so you're right. I think that it's not only the convenience of consuming things in your home, but it's also, well, why do I want to go out and experience that? It's no longer comfortable. It's no longer a kind of pleasant experience. It's no longer a kind of community experience. You know, it, it, you know, it's like trying to, depending on where you live, trying to, trying to watch, you know, a Bambi in a war.
00:16:10.280So, uh, yeah, that, that is a significant, uh, that is a significant problem, but, but also just the question of what, you know, what does a culture value? Obviously there's always been money men, you know, Hollywood, whatever, any sort of industry, the fine art industry, you know, um, that, that in one capacity or the other, are people who are thinking about this from a business point of view.
00:16:36.140So that's just how it is. But you, there was always an understanding that tempering that, or that sort of even, you know, augmenting that, that kind of input, that kind of aspect of culture production.
00:16:48.880There were people who actually cared. I mean, there were people who cared about quality. They cared about inspiration. They cared about, you know, what they were producing. They had something to say.
00:17:00.560And I think, of course, more and more, these people, either they don't exist anymore because they've been, you know, again, people generally have just been so demoralized, um, and at the prospect of ever having a balance between their kind of artistic and, um, uh, you know, um, impulses and making money.
00:17:21.060So, so I just think people have just, you know, sort of tamped out their own, their own creative fire. Uh, and I, I think you see this in a larger sense, you know, um, you, you occasionally will get these kind of Oscar bait, you know, I mean, in a sense of film, Oscar bait, try hard, you know, we're making a statement with a capital S, but still, you know, it's, it still seems geared towards, towards a sort of temporal worldly sort of sense of profit.
00:17:51.060You know, rather than, you know, I've got a great idea. I'm really interested in this story. I'm really interested. You know, I'm, I'm a great cinematographer. I, you know, I'm, I've got some cracking ideas for costumes, whatever people who are invested. Now it still exists, obviously to some degree, but you know, there's something, there's some, there's this kind of impoverishment of the spirit, you know, when you're just like, well, I'm a very talented costume designer and I've got to make more kind of, you know, kind of make more Spider-Man.
00:18:21.060suits. I've got to make, you know, this or that. I mean, there's something that's, that's sort of wilts the, wilts the creative impulse.
00:18:31.460Yeah, exactly. I went to art school for this. Yeah. But so, so I, I do think, you know, we, it's a, it's a sort of multivalent problem.
00:18:41.140And of course, with culture, you know, with whatever it is, cinema or, you know, you know, to a lesser degree painting or, you know, uh, literature, literature, you can sort of gauge the health of a civilization, you know, by its, by its fruits, by its products, uh, uh, artistic products.
00:18:59.760And of course it's, it's not looking good for, for us.
00:19:04.420Well, on that note, and I think it's important. I like that you, you keep redirecting this to seeing the production of art and the enjoyment of art as a barometer for health for civilization.
00:19:17.320I think that's true. And to be clear, uh, I'm a Philistine. Like this is not something that comes naturally to me. Uh, I'm someone who really had to have the value of beauty, uh, explained to me very directly and just bludgeoned into me, uh, before I kind of grasped this.
00:19:34.800So I'm still operating, you know, I, I get this in, in an abstract way and I do my best to try to, uh, you know, push things in a positive direction.
00:19:43.180But to be clear, I'm not, uh, you know, I'm not well versed. This is not my impulse, even though I recognize that ultimately this is incredibly valuable and important.
00:19:52.380Uh, but an interesting thing to also look at expanding beyond just the movie going specifically experience is the way in which the, uh, and I hate, uh, you know, I'm tempted to use the word consumption.
00:20:04.800Of art, but immediately recognize how that's not good, uh, appreciation of art, but, but the general experience of art and a society, the way that that is approached, I think is important.
00:20:18.160There's a, a scale issue that I think exists here as well, where in previous forms, you know, be it, be it, you know, the, the, the actual play, the real theater ballet, these other, uh, forms of enjoying art,
00:20:33.660the corporate enjoyment was a place to see and be seen, right?
00:20:39.520Now, obviously you were enjoying the art being produced itself, but there was a very important communal aspect.
00:20:45.780Like you said, you're with people who are like you, uh, but also it's a moment where maybe, uh, you rub shoulders with those of different stratas.
00:20:53.580Uh, you experience a type of culture that perhaps, uh, you know, exists, you know, as part of kind of who you are, but maybe you don't always get to elevate yourself to.
00:21:03.880And it was a place where people would recognize, okay, well, being here, being, seeing, being a part of this is critical to, uh, understanding and sharing the experience of the people around me.
00:21:16.040And it feels like, again, as we, as we talked about, because of the shattering of culture, the way in which, uh, we have kind of, uh, created these thousands of different outlets for you to just consume product, as opposed to engage in a corporate act of appreciation.
00:21:33.580Uh, we've kind of broken away from that ability to kind of share a zeitgeist, uh, when we're looking at a movie, looking at a play, listening to a piece of music.
00:21:46.080There's just something about that shared experience that is often lost.
00:21:50.460I still feel it when I go to a concert, uh, for the most part, but I definitely don't feel it in kind of these other formats in which art is usually enjoyed.
00:22:33.640I mean, you bring up really a lot of great points there.
00:22:36.480I mean, so, so one thing I, I should clarify that the, that, that art exists in a whole strata, you know, you can think about a kind of step pyramid where, uh, perhaps that's a bit too hierarchical, you know, but I mean, there are different forms of art and different sort of levels of arts and, uh, and or entertainments for, for, for different people.
00:23:00.240For different situations, for different types of engagement, you know, for instance, there's the entire, you know, if you're, you know, particularly if you're a, you're a Roman Catholic in, you know, in, in, in medieval, you know, Britain.
00:23:12.760And, uh, part of your experience of going to, to church is a, a, a, a, a whole, a totalizing aesthetic experience.
00:23:23.000You know, there is scent, there is music, there is sound, there's voices, there's, again, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's liturgy, sermon, there's the, the words of the mass, you know, there's stained glass, depending on, you know, the size of the church you're in.
00:23:37.960And, I mean, this is a kind of high experience because, of course, it's all tied up in the expression of your religious faith, your faith in God and your worship of God.
00:23:48.320Well, those same peasants, of course, would also very much enjoy going to a, going to a, a, a, a cockfight, you know, or to, or to watch a bear being baited.
00:23:59.360But, uh, if you take, uh, the example of Shakespeare's, you know, the period when Shakespeare was living, uh, very, very near, uh, where the Globe Theatre was, there was a, a famous cockpit, you know, which was a place where literally people would go and watch chickens tear each other apart.
00:24:16.300There was a bear baiting, um, arena very close to where the Globe was, where people would go and watch a, watch a bear be annoyed and poked and, and prodded around, you know.
00:24:25.900And then, of course, even at the Globe, where Shakespeare plays and other plays were being performed, there was literally a kind of, kind of hierarchical tear, you know, down on the ground, right, you know, right below the area of the stage was where, you know, where the cheap seats, the groundlings, you know, as they call them, the people would, would, would, would be there, generally standing.
00:24:48.920And then, of course, as you went up in the kind of tiers of the theatre, they were kind of higher and higher personages, you know, with better, you know, with seats, with, with, with better clothes, with different decorum, but they were all watching the same play, you know, they're all getting their own experience out of it.
00:25:05.780Now, of course, Shakespeare, or whoever else, who else was writing the drama, had to understand that he, that he was, that he had to engage all, all the people watching, you know, the people on the ground had to, had to get something from it.
00:25:22.400So they would get intrigue, they would get fights, they would, you know, they would get, they would get these probably more visceral things that made more sense to them, a more, more kind of tear to their experience, as did, you know, the people in the higher up seats, you know, they would have, you know, interest in more kind of complex, martial, historical conflicts, whatever, there was something for everyone.
00:25:42.120But you're right, I mean, you know, art doesn't, there's just not one type of good art, there's, there's things for everyone.
00:25:49.280So I'm not suggesting that everything has to be a kind of, you know, a kind of didactic, intellectual sort of masterpiece, you know, that there, there are, there have always been, you know, different levels of things, but, you know, for different types of people for different types of consumption.
00:26:07.980So one of the things that I have that kind of got me thinking about this, ultimately, along with the failure of these large movies, was the level of proficiency that now exists.
00:26:21.800Obviously, the guitar has existed for a very long time, and has existed in its electric form for, you know, at least since, what, the 1930s, 1940s.
00:26:32.380And in that time, we've seen an explosion in ability.
00:26:37.300You know, I'm, I'm someone who obviously likes heavy metal, in case people couldn't tell from behind me.
00:26:42.000And this is an art form that is known for its proficiency, its technical proficiency, which was already gaining impressive kind of differences between, say, the 1960s or 70s and the 80s.
00:26:57.200Kind of, kind of the new wave of British heavy metal and the, the, the ability that many people displayed in that moment.
00:27:03.800Now, of course, we always get moments where the complexity of art is stripped down.
00:27:09.900And I know people will cringe at heavy metal being called art, but it is, obviously.
00:27:14.080And so, you know, there are moments where you get like a grunge reaction where people want something more basic, you know, something a little less focused on ability.
00:27:26.060But ultimately, we continue to see kind of a compounding of technical skill in something like the guitar playing to the point now where you just can see videos on the internet of, you know, 10 year olds playing just these insane guitar solos that were just revolutionary when someone like Dave Mustaine or somebody was playing them back in the 1980s.
00:27:50.300And now there are these, you know, bands that are just doing, you know, they're playing poly rhythms, like they're, they're, they're doing one thing, like several different rhythms all happening simultaneously as they play and syncing up like the technical quality is extremely high.
00:28:07.060And yet people feel like the innovation is gone, like they've lost something spiritually, ultimately, that was driving the quality of the music.
00:28:19.200And again, we could say the same thing when we look at the technical aspects of filmmaking, obviously, theoretically, we have more computer generated graphics, you could do whatever you want, in theory with a lot of this stuff.
00:28:31.280And yet it's nowhere near as captivating as a classic kind of Hollywood action movie that would have used real explosions and squibs and things in the 80s.
00:28:43.580Do you think that there's a possibility that formats, artistic formats can be solved in a way where they can reach a level of technical excellence that is so high that ultimately, there's not a lot more to do inside that?
00:29:01.300Or is there's always the cyclical quality where complexity will eventually break down, and kind of a new form of artistic approach will break through, even though it might be more simplistic, technically?
00:29:16.720I mean, and sort of, you know, I mean, you have this sort of large form, you know, the drama, you know, music, whatever.
00:29:23.480And then, of course, there's kind of subcategories upon subcategories.
00:29:27.480And yes, absolutely, certainly, what people often think of as styles or genres of music, for instance, they run their course.
00:29:36.720You know, so I'm particularly fond of Baroque period music, you know, 17th, 18th century.
00:29:44.280I mean, obviously, J.S. Bach, you know, Handel, you know, many of the great composers and lots of lesser composers from that period.
00:29:55.580And so you think of someone like J.S. Bach, you know, who we understand as a kind of one of the absolute transcendent geniuses of all of human history, certainly in that world of music.
00:30:10.400Well, Bach wrote, you know, he wrote in sort of high Baroque style.
00:30:15.020He was very interested in fugal writing.
00:30:17.300He was very interested in counterpoint.
00:30:20.160And but Bach lived a very, you know, he lived relatively a very long time.
00:30:25.080And by the end of his life, in about 1750, he was a his type, his style, his the genre in which he expressed himself so divinely.
00:30:42.880You know, he was you know, he I mean, his final sort of thing that he was working on was called the Kunst der Fugue, the Art of Fugue, which was, you know, just a set of absolutely incredibly complex and intellectually powerful fugal compositions.
00:30:59.260But this was something that a genre that had been spent, you know, people were it was we were progressing towards the classical era.
00:31:29.160But I do think that one of the problems that we have now is is that it I hate to quote Douglas Murray because I find him such a loathsome person.
00:31:40.780But, you know, there's this line which my friend academic agent used to like, which which was this idea that European civilization was tired, you know, that that we're all just sort of we're exhausted with tired, we're fagged out.
00:31:54.960And I think that there is an element of the postmodern moment that has it's not just that this mastery that you that you and that is, again, part of it that they kind of exhaust these various forms.
00:32:10.780But there's also something pernicious that I think is eaten away people's very will to master things, very will to express things in a kind of higher way.
00:32:22.480And in addition to that, of course, I think another problem, which, you know, obviously comes up a lot in, you know, you've talked about it and written about it.
00:32:31.200But the idea of democracy as a kind of philosophical concept, not just as a political concept.
00:32:38.760And democracy is absolutely terrible for for great art, I think.
00:32:44.380So there's this idea that now that I think that even people who are against it, you know, we've grown up in this soup, this this sort of foul broth that says, well, in the end, everything.
00:32:57.000There should be an egalitarian aspect to everything.
00:33:01.340You know, everyone has something tribute.
00:33:18.280You know, art is, of course, the process of exclusion.
00:33:21.540You're excluding people along the way, people who are less talented, less inspired, who have less mastery of their craft, you know.
00:33:29.620And unfortunately, we live in this just absolutely totally media-saturated world where everyone has access to a theoretically limitless audience.
00:33:39.180And so anyone can go out there and play licks on their guitar or play their lute or paint pictures of monkeys or whatever.
00:33:49.260And so you're just competing against this utterly vast, endless supply of content.
00:33:55.820And I think that that is absolutely poisonous to the kind of hierarchical nature that great art aspires to.
00:34:04.020Yeah, that's a very interesting way to approach that because, of course, in some sense, as you already pointed out with the different levels of, you know, Shakespeare, he was appeasing both the low and the high.
00:34:17.900But some aspect of art, especially the most avant-garde art, has always been its exclusive nature.
00:34:29.540And that limited aspect has a lot of very powerful ways of impacting the human psyche, especially when it comes to access.
00:34:40.520You know, if I was inside this artistic circle, if I could see what was going on, if I had the ability to reach in and create, then that was a very exclusive, that was a very high status thing that happened.
00:34:53.280Again, the cultivation of kind of exclusive access not only created status, but also limited the ability to produce, which meant there was a very specific type of person who was able to be elevated to that.
00:35:08.300And, you know, parallel, not exactly, but it just kind of triggered this thought for me.
00:35:13.100And I want to remember it before, you know, we don't, if this is a rabbit trail, we don't have to go too far on it.
00:35:18.720But another big thing is this democratizing of access, as you pointed out, in some ways, it's great.
00:35:27.080I mean, guys like me, who otherwise wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing now, get the ability to do it because we all have the ability to create a platform.
00:35:35.560And so in many ways, that breaks kind of the cartel monopoly on, say, political, you know, commentating or, you know, art or philosophy or any number of things that we can involve ourselves in.
00:35:48.960But due to our access of kind of everything all the time, we lose the appreciation of kind of the regional talent, right?
00:35:58.200Like the person who is excellent in their time and in their place, but maybe they can't win against every person who's ever done this on the planet simultaneously.
00:36:08.780And so that lack of kind of regional and particular accomplishment, that exclusivity means that everyone is constantly competing.
00:36:18.760Everyone is constantly being judged against every possible aspect of anyone doing that artistic form across the globe.
00:36:27.000And you really lose that ability to say, there is that poet from our hometown, there's that great artist from our area, there's that playwright that has transformed and made us famous in the world for bringing our style or our understanding or our voice into the mainstream.
00:36:47.260And I think that's critical because what is so much of what's important about art is its ability to reflect us, to reflect who we are and our specific experiences.
00:36:56.280And when you don't have that particularity, when you don't have that regionality, instead, you just kind of have the experience of the gray goo.
00:37:05.060And that means everyone's participating, everyone's involved, everyone can create, everyone can critique.
00:37:10.320And there's never any kind of level of gatekeeping or level of friction between kind of the individual and this kind of larger creative Melu.
00:37:22.000And that sounds good in theory, but it can also remove some of the refining process that really makes it what it is.
00:37:31.300I mean, you know, there's something absolutely terrible about this leveling.
00:37:35.100I mean, you hear, and for instance, you know, I mean, you think about, think about someone writing poetry, think about someone writing, writing songs or ballads or whatever.
00:37:42.720I mean, part of that experience of the music of language is going to be informed by your pronunciation, your regional dialect, the words that you heard that had the kind of contributions from, you know, all the people who kind of settled and built up the area where you're from.
00:38:00.980And of course, one aspect of the global society is that it's eroded away.
00:38:10.540I mean, now when you hear, particularly Americans talk, and now there are some exceptions to this, for instance, that the American South, even though there, I mean, even though those regional dialects are also dwindling and disappearing, but they persist a bit more than other areas of the United States.
00:38:29.640But, you know, it's all kind of coalescing on this flabby, vocal fry, up-talking California, you know, sort of trans-California kind of sound, and we lose all of this regional variation.
00:38:44.980I mean, you take England, for instance, and it used to be that from village to village, you would hear different manifestations of a dialect, of an accent, of a way of pronouncing words.
00:38:57.620And of course, when everyone is consuming the same thing, everyone is hearing the same voices, this, of course, very quickly, it starts to erode away.
00:39:07.280It's like a jagged rock in a stream, and depending on the power of the water, the rock gets smoother and smoother and smoother until there are no features left, you know.
00:39:18.660You know, think about someone who is, you know, inspired to be a landscape painter or photographer.
00:39:24.760Well, they go out of the house, and they walk around, and what do they see?
00:39:28.660Well, you know, they see a Red Robin, they see a Chick-fil-A, they see, you know, they see a whatever, you know, big box stores.
00:39:38.320They see McDonald's, which all have the same completely denatured, bland architecture.
00:39:45.380All of the features that would have been particular to their town or to their region, again, they're all going away, and one place begins to just look like every other place.
00:39:57.180Now, of course, you know, Europe has a slight advantage because there's much longer kind of built history there.
00:40:05.700You know, there's lots of buildings from lots of periods which are still standing, and so it resists to some degree this kind of leveling.
00:40:15.120You know, America, for good or ill, has a much shorter history and, of course, has a much more kind of transitory feeling about the physical environment, about buildings, particularly now in the modern era, where we don't care at all.
00:40:28.900We build things to last for 20 years at most, and they barely make it that far.
00:40:33.760So I do think that, yes, this flattening of kind of particularity of place is an absolutely terrible thing.
00:40:39.940Another thing that is, you know, that is absolutely corrosive to the kind of detail of a broad and rich tapestry of culture.
00:40:52.480The other thing I should mention, of course, is that I think that creative people, even though, of course, this is absolutely against the way that everyone thinks about the arts, but I think in a way, being a creative person, whatever, whether you're a musician, writer, artist, whatever, tend towards what we call the right wing.
00:41:16.660You know, I mean, there is an inherent understanding, or at least there used to be, an inherent understanding of the value and power of hierarchy.
00:41:25.300You understood, you know, in your bones, this sense of hierarchy, this nature of things, this way that the world properly functions.
00:41:36.180And again, even though the low level politics of creative people has been so infested with, you know, kind of leftist pablum over the years, but I do think that there's an inherent kind of hook for an elite, elitist hierarchical understanding.
00:41:54.020You know, I encountered this all the time, so for instance, people know that I have a very broad palette of, I mean, if you take painting, you know, there are many periods and many places and many styles of painting that I admire deeply.
00:42:10.860And of course, one of those is high modernism, you know, and so of course, you know, I will occasionally tweet out images of artwork, I tweeted out a couple of Picassos the other day, I mean, Picasso, of course, you know, he's, this is work that was produced over 100 years ago, I mean, it's, there's nothing, there's nothing new or shocking about Picasso in this day and age.
00:42:32.060But it is interesting how it still produces a certain violence among certain people, they get very angry, this isn't art, this is trash, Picasso ruined, ruined art.
00:42:44.120Well, the thing is, Picasso isn't for you.
00:42:46.880You know, you can't just, again, it is this vestige of egalitarianism, where people think, well, you should be able to stumble into a museum, I'm going to take a group of eight year olds, and I'm going to force them to walk through an art museum,
00:43:00.080and they're going to sit still and be quiet, and they're going to look at all these things, and they're going to like them.
00:44:14.040And I think just people need to shed this idea that everything needs to appeal to everyone, that there's a whole world out there.
00:44:21.540And this is why I always think of the art.
00:44:23.040There is no kind of magical, lofty land of art that's good.
00:44:29.440There are all sorts of arts, and there are all sorts of levels of art.
00:44:33.280So I think that's a very important thing to understand.
00:44:35.780And it is so much related to kind of political ideas that I think people are – it's easier for people to grasp the idea of hierarchy in something like politics.
00:44:46.900But, you know, they go into popular arts, whatever, and suddenly they're all egalitarian again.
00:44:52.320I should be able to understand this right away.
00:44:56.560And it is something related, I think, to also this – pardon the word – but this kind of slopification of everything.
00:45:04.360So to draw the discussion back to art forms and to touch on the topic of particularity that you were discussing there, everything isn't for everyone all the time.
00:45:16.440Art forms may not continue to be eternal if they're not practiced and they're not created in the context of the people who are ultimately meant to be enjoying the art.
00:45:29.000I'll go ahead and fill out the bingo card for people who are playing along at home.
00:45:33.380Oswald Spengler pointed out that he believed art was really very much tied to particular civilizations and that the attempt to revive art forms in new civilizations was good but was ultimately something very different from its original form.
00:45:54.380So famously his point was that the Renaissance, while it was reviving many of these kind of forms from antiquity, was itself its own distinct thing.
00:46:04.580And even though in many ways they were aping or inspired by that art from antiquity, ultimately the form could only ever be that of kind of the Italian Renaissance.
00:46:15.000It was defined by that period, it's marked by the culture, the people who make it, the people who will ultimately appreciate it.
00:46:23.300And so therefore art forms do die, their life cycles do end with the civilizations that give birth to them.
00:46:31.960And new synthesis can arise, appreciations of old forms can revive themselves into new forms, but it's always a new form.
00:46:45.280Do you think that that's overstating it?
00:46:47.300How do you feel about the culture particularity of forms in their life cycles?
00:46:51.960I think you're, I think that's absolutely correct.
00:46:54.640You know, but, but with the caveat that there's been a great sort of rupture in this natural process of, of, of, of, of birth and, and, and, and flourishment and death and, and, and then rising again, you know, the, the, some of the components of those things, taking new forms and taking new meaning as, as, as different type, you know, periods of time embrace them.
00:47:18.460I think, unfortunately we are now beached on the, on the rocky shores of, of, of, of kind of postmodernism or even post postmodernism, whatever that, that may actually mean to the, to the point where, again, it's almost as if people have, have just been deflated to the point where the idea of a kind of authentic reaction to something, you know, it's, it's just no longer within many people's reach.
00:47:47.520Even very talented people, even, you know, very technically proficient people, very thoughtful people.
00:47:52.980So I'm, I'm thinking, of course, you know, I, and I think about architecture in this way.
00:47:57.500Well, you ask, you know, ask sort of your average kind of right-wing people, what, what, what do they want to see in architecture?
00:48:02.580Well, we can all agree that we are in this absolutely dire moment where just, just sort of the worst forms that have, that, that have come up in the past, I don't know, I would say 75 years, maybe longer, have just kind of, we can never get rid of them now.
00:48:20.900Because again, they represent a kind of cost, you know, a cost benefit ratio that favors the corporate structures that pay for these things.
00:48:31.160And so we're just endlessly stuck with this kind of glass, steel, concrete, you know, one abomination after the other.
00:48:38.720So we can all agree there's something wrong, even in kind of small scale architecture in, in like new builds, you know, which are, which are even more dire than the glass and steel skyscraper at this point.
00:48:50.500But then you ask, well, what do we do?
00:48:52.860How, how do we, how do we get out of this?
00:48:55.340Well, obviously there needs to be a kind of return to quality.
00:48:58.160You know, we need to stop relying upon cheap, you know, illegal immigrants to cobble together our terrible new builds.
00:49:05.400But also, how do we think about a kind, how do we think of beauty that, that is genuine, that comes out of our moment?
00:49:13.520And of course, I think a lot of people don't do this, particularly, you know, for some reason, people on the right, they, they, they want this sort of endless,
00:49:20.120endless recurrence of, you know, sort of Georgian, this, this kind of blend of Georgian and, and, you know, you know, and sort of, sort of neo-Gothic, you know, classical, this, this kind of miasma of the kind of gestures of beauty forever.
00:49:38.000But in a way, that's just more of a postmodern moment.
00:49:41.980That is just a kind of simulation of the, the, the, the resonant styles of the past, you know.
00:49:49.320So, and, and, and even, you know, if you go to periods where, like, where Georgian architecture, Palladian architecture sort of took over, even then, that, that kind of wave of neoclassical, you know, let, let sort of ape proportions and features of, you know, Roman and, and, and Greek architecture.
00:50:09.940Well, that also swept away a kind of native architectural style and, and, and sentiment in, in England, for example.
00:50:18.140If you look at this period where just before the kind of Palladianism began to take over neoclassical and Georgian styles, you know, which came later, there was a kind of native architecture that was not, it was not continental.
00:50:31.120It was not really classical, it was its own thing.
00:50:35.360I mean, the, the Renaissance in, in Britain had a very different form from the Renaissance in Florence or wherever.
00:50:41.920And, you know, again, there was a native style.
00:50:44.540For instance, there's an architect who I very much admire from that period called Robert Smithson, that's Smith with a Y.
00:50:50.620But again, this was very quickly blown away by Inigo Jones and the, and again, the advent of, of, of this kind of neoclassical style, which in itself was a kind of weird revival.
00:51:02.840So we think of this as a kind of problem of ours, but it is something that has gone on before.
00:51:08.700But I do think there's a particular problem in that you just can't revive pastiches of, of past forms and say, well, that's, that's how we're going to kind of revive art.
00:51:20.820You know, I mean, the question is what, what is something that will speak in our voice, in our time, but, but speak with beauty and force.
00:51:30.160The, the most recent example that I think people are aware of is Art Deco, which was a movement, you know, in the, in the, you know, 19, early 1920s, 1930s, and tailing off in the 1940s.
00:51:42.880And you saw manifestations of it all over America, all over Europe.
00:51:46.260And it was, again, a truly modern form that was absolutely obsessed with beauty and, and, you know, and, and, but also kind of dealing with the, this new, the coming machine age.
00:52:02.000And it did it beautifully and people love it.
00:52:04.200You know, people can find people on the right and left who say this, now this is good architecture, you know, but how do we make that synthesis again?
00:52:10.840And I wonder, you know, whether we're so deadened that it's even possible without some great sort of cultural revival, some great springing forth of, of new, of new forms, new ideas.
00:52:28.760I did, I had Art Deco in the back of my mind the whole time you were speaking until you got to it there as well.
00:52:34.460You know, it was just one of those that I feel like ultimately did not, it did great things, but, you know, maybe it was gone before its time, perhaps due to, you know, some post-war feelings, I suppose.
00:52:50.360But, but, but, but some, something that still has vibrancy and perhaps it could, could be brought back only because it, it did not exhaust itself.
00:52:57.940I feel like that there's still something there, but, but I'm far from an expert there.
00:53:02.700I, I think that it's, it really, you, you bring out the, the real crux of the issue and one that we're probably not going to solve today ultimately, which is finding kind of that true voice in the moment, finding art that feels real and speaks to kind of where we are now, bringing elements of the past, bringing elements of beauty that have maybe been shunned in the modern world.
00:53:27.280Uh, but not just aping, uh, these previous art styles, recognizing that return is not the goal, but ultimately, uh, beauty is the goal expression in, in kind of the current moment, uh, in the current form is the goal.
00:53:41.440But that, that, that is of course a much harder thing to do, uh, which is why critiquing art and making art are very different things.
00:53:48.820Uh, and, uh, and the, uh, former is much easier than the latter.
00:53:52.560Uh, we could go into this topic for quite a long time and I think we should do another one of these because this has been a great conversation, uh, so far, but we are stacking up quite a few, uh, super chats.
00:54:03.640So if we want any hope of getting through them at a reasonable time, we should probably get started.
00:54:08.240Uh, but Mr. D, is there anything you want to direct people to anything you're working on or you want people to know about spaces you're doing or, or any writing you're doing anything like that?
00:54:43.140They often late at night, but with, with various friends, people who watch your, uh, channel or in will, will know many of the people who are regulars on my spaces.
00:55:01.400So, uh, if people are interested, if they can figure up late at night, you can visit me on Twitter and I will be having one of these spaces, uh, tonight at 11 PM Eastern.
00:55:09.860So, uh, that's, um, that's where you can find me.
00:55:12.960Uh, I also may in the future be, I I've still got incipient desire to, to start a YouTube channel.
00:55:58.580That's, that's why I went to Mr. D for sure.
00:56:00.900Uh, like I said, I am a Philistine, uh, but I, I know at the very least I should be appreciating art.
00:56:05.720And so I will at least bring people on to help us better understand how to do so.
00:56:11.240Uh, perspicacious heretic says, I think the real problem is that we don't have enough soulless committee stitching together scripts.
00:56:18.640Uh, do you want to comment on that very quickly, Mr. D?
00:56:21.380Obviously, like you said, the money men have always been a part of art to some extent, but do you feel there's something particularly about the kind of current commercialization that makes it difficult to break through and be authentic?
00:56:34.980I mean, in fact, that, that is something that you can even apply that to a broader extent.
00:56:39.140I mean, the, the committee, again, which is a totally quote, democratic, egalitarian experience.
00:56:44.900It is just the death of any kind of creativity, whether you have interesting ideas in business, whether you have interesting ideas in, in, in, in politics, the focus group, the kind of, you know, the kind of polling, the kind of poll driven or, or, or kind of committee, community, dare I say long house approach to everything.
00:57:04.800It's just the absolute death of, of creativity and vibrancy, you know, I mean, whether it's, you know, a kind of, whether it, you're talking about the American government, you're talking about a kind of film, you need strong unitary figures with their own ideas and their own sort of bravery and approach.
00:57:23.560And you're not going to get that if everything is eroded and washed away by, by, by the, by the bland, blandification of the committee.
00:57:41.640You definitely need that singular vision.
00:57:43.680And a lot of people say, well, singular vision could fail, you know, and yes, singular visions fail more often than they succeed to be sure.
00:57:51.460But when you're looking for quality, when you're looking for inspiration, when you're looking to make a statement that defines an era, you have to be willing to fail.
00:58:00.280You have to, you can't just set up products and committees to minimize loss.
00:58:05.060You don't want the Nash equilibrium when you're making art.
00:58:51.520I think that that's true to an extent, but I think that once you get beyond a certain kind of range of appeal,
00:58:58.280you do actually have to start putting in things that you think people will hate.
00:59:04.260Like that does actually happen that the decision making that gets you to the wider audience eventually gets you to the point where you lose the core audience.
00:59:35.180And so in their desire to appeal to everyone, yes, for a while they widen the expanse of the audience.
00:59:41.980But ultimately, they hollow out the core of the thing that gave it any distinct meaning.
00:59:45.900So I understand that it's kind of at odds, it feels like.
00:59:49.880But ultimately, I think that the desire to expand kind of the audience or the consumer base for many of these artistic endeavors ultimately does drive you to include things that will make people hate it, even though that's counterintuitive.
01:00:09.780Yeah, I think there's certainly something to that.
01:00:12.960I mean, you know, we also live in this this weird kind of perverted echo of the Victorian age, you know, where, where, of course, like the policing of morality, you know, is is is kind of becomes a primary importance.
01:00:28.580But the difference of, of, of, of, of, again, what they want to top the cultural idea of a morality now where we're kind of insisting on this morality that is, of course, the most amoral, immoral things imaginable.
01:00:47.460But once you start trying to make what should be artistic decisions with, with kind of a dogmatic set of moral imperatives, it's just going to be the worst thing ever.
01:01:02.660You know, it's just, it's just this very weird idea where it's just like, we all know that this, this person is not particularly attractive.
01:01:09.660We know that this person isn't particularly talented.
01:01:12.100We know that this particular person has a loathsome personality.
01:01:15.000But we're, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to put it in anyway, we're going to fail, it's going to be complete disaster, like Snow White.
01:01:24.420But we're going to do it despite this, because it's the right thing to do.
01:01:28.340It is really weird that this, this, this, this kind of immoral morality that we're forced to, that is just liquefying everything around it.
01:01:37.800But I mean, the wonderful thing, of course, is that people still, in their heart of hearts, know what's good and know what's bad, at least some of them do.
01:01:46.400And of course, we do see these things fail, which is nice.
01:01:49.300Yeah, I do believe, of course, being a adherent of elite theory, that there's a lot that the elites can do, the upper crust, the highest tier, can do to influence, taste, and drive things.
01:02:11.620And that's as true for art as it is for politics, right?
01:02:14.800That ultimately, you can have these degenerate elites, and they can push kind of these radical, ugly aspects and try to make that art.
01:02:24.620And it works for a while, but there is ultimately a hard stop on that kind of power.
01:02:30.320It does undo itself if it's not undone by something else.
01:02:34.400And so I think we are hitting that limit when it comes to the type of moviemaking you're talking about.
01:02:39.260Yeah, even in governance or politics, you know, hard authoritarian power, which is against the kind of general will of the people it's being inflicted upon, it may work for a short time.
01:02:53.220You know, I think of the Peronists, you know, or something like that.
01:02:58.560But of course, if it is pushing against the general sort of will of the populace, it will break.
01:03:25.360Yeah, as an elite, you're better off guiding those instincts rather than entirely trying to transform them or push directly against them.
01:03:33.980And so you can see that the higher level of influence, be it in art or politics, comes when an elite knows how to work within the real rather than trying to force a highly artificial frame onto something.
01:03:46.800And I think that just manifests itself across the board, both in art and in politics.
01:03:51.320Again, Mr. Heretic says, as I've grown, I've seen less influenced by Boomer Truth.
01:03:58.280I find it difficult to reconcile that art I grew up with.
01:04:30.160You know, I don't like, of course, everything that he did.
01:04:32.500And, of course, it does not mean that I am a fan of, you know, his particular politics or lifestyle or whatever.
01:04:40.220I mean, this is something that if you really appreciate art, at a certain point, you've got to understand that great art, to some degree, will transcend these temporal issues.
01:04:54.080I mean, Pablo Picasso was a ridiculous communist, a communist living in a villa, you know, literally going to Communist Party meetings when he was a rich and internationally famous artist.
01:05:12.220Again, this is something we will all be familiar with.
01:05:14.520And yet, at a certain point, even though occasionally it does influence his art, but you also understand that he was producing art that came from a different place.
01:05:27.180Occasionally it would inflect his artwork, his politics or whatever, his character.
01:05:31.480He was also kind of a loathsome person as well.
01:05:33.400But, again, in a sense, you've got to make this disconnect, you know.
01:05:38.560You cannot throw out, you know, sort of genuinely great products of artistic production, you know, just because, of course, it feels political.
01:05:49.260I mean, that's, in fact, the worst thing to do.
01:05:50.920If you like, and you obviously it's undeniable that certainly the Beatles produced some absolutely astounding work, and a lot of it is still quite enjoyable today, just go with it.
01:06:04.760Don't let petty politics besmirch kind of what I think is a kind of higher order of human experience.
01:06:14.200You know, you've got to learn to separate the two.
01:06:17.240Now, of course, occasionally it gets difficult.
01:06:19.160You know, no one is going to go back and say, well, I absolutely love watching old reruns of Jim will fix it because Jimmy Savile was great.
01:06:26.700No, I mean, there's a certain point where the product is so poisoned that that's more difficult.
01:06:33.880But, yeah, don't allow people to kind of, you know, to kind of do this, you know.
01:06:41.220Think of your aesthetic taste, your artistic appreciation of things, your love of music, whatever.
01:06:48.260Think of this as a realm higher than all of these petty temporal concerns.
01:07:27.640I mean, I, I think it's, you know, certainly in, in, in art.
01:07:30.220I mean, if you think about, there's almost nothing more dire than public art, you know.
01:07:35.240I mean, almost anything that is, that is funded by a, I mean, with a few exceptions, but funded by a kind of committee that, that gives a public grant.
01:07:45.340I mean, it's, it's just, it's going to be something that, something that no one likes, you know.
01:07:51.440But, but of course, you also have to understand that there's always going to be a patron.
01:07:57.100There's, there's always going to be a patron and a client, you know, and, and of course it worked this way back into the midst of, of, of, of, of history.
01:08:07.080You know, I mean, if, if you were, if, you know, if you were an artist, you required a generally a powerful patron, whether it be a figure in the church, you know.
01:08:16.720So, take the, the, the artist, Michelangelo Caravaggio, you know, who was, who was, who was patronized by, by members of the, of the church.
01:08:26.520Or you take Anthony Van Dyke, you know, who was, of course, patronized by Charles, you know, Charles I of England, you know.
01:08:33.640There's always going to be a patron, but there's, again, a difference between the kind of, kind of working in synergy with a unitary patron who is, who is giving you something in return for something.
01:08:53.260It just, yeah, you're, again, it's, it's, it's, it's the sort of, you know, it's the kind of democratization or the, or the eternal, the eternal longhouse, to use that term again.
01:09:04.280You know, where, where you, you're not getting the kind of, the, the taste and, and, and sort of, um, uh, power relationship that you get in a proper patron-client relationship.
01:09:15.440So, yeah, it's, it's utterly, um, usually utterly awful, whatever comes out of that arrangement.
01:09:52.640Uh, Kruber Reardon says, what do you say to people who say we need to lean into kitsch or be avant-garde fetish art, for example, or memes?
01:10:08.060It, it happens, you know, I mean, again, memes, I mean, memes are, again, it, it, it is art in the sense that it is a manifestation of our kind of moment, political moment, cultural moment, whatever, you know.
01:10:24.220I mean, obviously it is an expression, and again, I'm just saying that there are different tiers of art.
01:10:29.040I mean, it's, there's nothing wrong with calling these things, all of them coming under the general aegis of art, you know, that, that's happily true.
01:10:35.940Whether it's memes, whether it's pop songs, even, even a bloody advert can, can be considered kind of, again, cultural production, a form of art, you know, but, but then you understand that there are, there are kind of tears.
01:10:50.780There's a kind of situation where one thing, one thing is, is, is going to be at the top of its little category, but it's, it's not going to be the same as some other, some other sort of great, greater work, you know, and, and, and that's fine.
01:11:03.280And it happens, but it is, it is undeniable.
01:11:05.860I mean, I, you know, I see, see people, oh, sorry, my dog is being set off.
01:11:10.140I see people, again, just constantly arguing, well, how can you say a painting of a soup can is, is great art?
01:11:15.920How do you compare this to, you know, Peter Paul Rubens or something like that?
01:11:19.280And I'm, I'm not, again, that they are two different modes of two different artists in two very different times, but they are both manifestations of the, of, of the creative spirit of their time.
01:11:30.320And, and, and they're both legitimate.
01:11:32.840So what you're saying is the Oren McIntyre gallery collection is just inevitable.
01:11:37.860Eventually we'll be, you know, putting sign tapping memes, you know, manifest media says,
01:11:45.900how do you feel about reels slash Tik TOK style videos and the type of content it popularizes, how brain dead things are compared to even 10 years ago.
01:11:55.040Honestly, when I started doing this professionally, when I moved from doing a part-time with another gig to moving to the blaze full-time,
01:12:02.640that's when kind of the YouTube shorts, reels, whatever started to make their way.
01:12:11.200And honestly, I just stopped because I felt like the, you know, the medium is the message to some extent.
01:12:16.280And I just, I felt like I was degrading the content to try to get it into the parameters.
01:12:23.680I'm sure there are people who are doing great things with it, but it was very clearly not for me or what I was making, but I'll get let Mr. D speak on it.
01:12:38.160He's just saying, how do you feel about how like reels and Tik TOK and these things kind of ultimately warp the idea of producing art or artistic content?
01:12:49.820I mean, maybe another time we can talk about how my theory is that, is that the internet actually destroyed the human soul.
01:12:57.320So I do think, I do think, I mean, I just got finished saying, oh, of course memes can be art and, you know, there's a limit to that, you know, and I do think that, well, in a way, again, it goes back to this idea of kind of democratization, the kind of, the kind of blanket, you know, access that people have to something.
01:13:15.980And I mean, there's nothing worse for civilization than, you know, the Tik TOK video.
01:13:21.280So, but I mean, I remember all, I remember all of these progressive steps towards, towards oblivion, like Vine and, you know, and, and, and Instagram and, and MySpace.
01:13:36.040And I mean, all of these things have just chipped away at the human soul.
01:13:39.400I think in the end, if we really want to save human, human culture and art, you know, we've got to nuke the internet and don't even get me started on quote AI.
01:13:51.280Uh, Novatrix says art is supposed to reflect the artist and most are hollow and decrepit these days charged with, uh, oasian for the, uh, for the past, present and future.
01:14:04.580It's supposed to lift the spirit, not smother it.
01:14:16.100I just, I would caution people because I do think that it's a particularly modern notion.
01:14:21.280The idea that art is always an expression of the artist.
01:14:25.020And that is not, it is true, but it is not true in the kind of biographical way that we tend to think of it.
01:14:32.500You know, again, we, there, there is too much, uh, emphasis on the idea of art as self-expression.
01:14:39.280And in the end, of course, if your art is only onanistic self-expression, it's, it's just, you know, again, it's, it's, it's fall out of the category of art and just, just come, you know, just, just become dreck.
01:14:56.500You know, so, so I, I do think that the idea of self-expression needs to be tempered by higher order, uh, concerns.
01:15:04.680And finally, super Joe's midlife crisis says only question that matters are YouTube poops art like the emoji or is there like poop videos on YouTube?
01:15:12.840I don't know about, I don't want to know about them to be clear.
01:15:15.300So if that's the case, I'll just remain ignorant, but, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm assuming the emoji there or something, but yeah.
01:15:22.060No, they used to be, they used to be very long time ago on YouTube.
01:15:24.840There used to be the, these things called YouTube poop, which was just kind of, yeah, I'm just kind of miserable videos cobbled together.
01:15:32.340I just, I vaguely remember it, but I think that's what he's talking about.
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