Not too long ago, one of the more common refrains from adults was that things were much better when they were growing up. However intolerant, churlish, and prejudiced that sounded, there was some truth to it, at least in the quality of our cultural and artistic life. Today an unmitigated glut of junk art, petty opinions, mediocre writing, third-rate poetry, films, and music has seeped into every waking moment of our lives, posing a real threat to art that is truly valuable and precious.
In just one day, more than 400 million people offer opinions on Meta, 800 million on X; and more than 100 million exchanges occur on Snapchat, not to mention the multitude of articles and corrosive reactions on websites, television, and online journals. Netflix, only one of many movie streaming platforms, screens over 400 new films every year of vastly varying quality. Of the four million books published every year, less than a quarter go through the rigorous screening process of editing, formatting, and formal publication. The rest are self-published, self-promoted, and marketed by a website or merely circulated privately as a word file.
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If that isn’t enough of a statistical benchmark, look at new art: with the rise of computer and mixed media art, the number of artists has quadrupled in the last decade, making India’s 360 million Instagram users the largest in the world. A sculptor makes only B.R. Ambedkar statues and sells them through his art website, another specialises in Shivaji: Shivaji in bronze, Shivaji in plaster, Shivaji as paper-weight. Some others work solely on mythical and political themes such as the Mahabharata and the freedom struggle. Numerous online galleries now offer paintings at cut-rate prices different rates for computer-generated and photoshopped art, not to forget customised sculpture for home and office, freestanding or table-top, in mediums of your choice: fibreglass, wax or ceramic, in easy monthly payments.
So much appears so quickly in the marketplace of art that it is becoming harder and harder to distinguish the second rate from the third rate, the mediocre from the mindless and the inept. What is the real value of a cultural realm that accepts everything within its unremarkable noisy network, and spews it out like a machine with a mechanical disorder? Should everything be available to everyone? If so, where is the place of the professional artist, the writer, the sculptor or filmmaker, those who spend a lifetime doing nothing but? Does the never-ending clutter of new art diminish their work and make it less valuable, less visible, and less relevant?
Overnight books
Sadly, when art enters private platforms it begins an unhealthy competition for self-adulation. Rakesh Saxena (name changed) received more than 3,000,00 likes for his lively e-book narrative of an eventful car journey from Udaipur to Mumbai, soon to be published, that he wrote overnight and posted on social media. In one fell swoop, he had overtaken the number of readers who liked James Joyce’s Ulysses, a book written over seven years about a day in the life of one man. With millions of people writing, self-editing, self-printing and self-marketing, is there any value in the old ways of sitting in isolation for long periods and developing a narrative, characters and storyline, when the real work can be quickly accomplished on a mobile phone and released into fawning cyberspace. Joyce may have achieved literary immortality, but Saxena has more likes, more followers.
In 1495, Leonardo da Vinci too could have posted his sketches for the painting of the “Last Supper” on Instagram, but he didn’t. A couple of centuries later, Monet could have put up drawings of water lilies on social media to check the number of likes, but he didn’t. More recently, Andy Warhol may well have similarly tested public reaction to his silkscreen paintings of Marilyn Monroe, but he didn’t. To new entrants in any field—arts, media, film, writing or design—these old ways seem entirely archaic and unfamiliar. A relative of mine who has converted many of his photographic portraits and landscapes into paintings similar to Van Gogh is now using computer aids to resurrect Cézanne. His wife is completing a children’s adventure book with the help of ChatGPT. Whether the book sells or the art finds a gallery, the narcissistic ambitions of today will allow every effort—however second rate—to pass off as great.
Whether art, architecture, writing, or film, the new expression is instantaneous, and so must also be instantly rewarded. Every year around early winter annual architecture award nominations are sent out through a host of sponsoring agencies and media, through numerous design journals, newspaper ads, television channels, cement companies, toilet fixture manufacturers and interior design magazines. The idea of the prize is to create a culture of achievement amid an atmosphere of professional exposure and publicity. Usually accompanied by a lavish ceremony held at a luxury hotel or resort, the awards are handed out by a jury of peers who received the awards the previous year. The procedure is entirely transparent and free of controversy, merely following all preset professional norms. It requires no evaluation of previous work or accomplishments, no review of overall contribution to the profession, and no assessment of creativity or uniqueness. All those who paid are entitled to a prize. As simple as that.
Googling Greek philosophy
When awards can be bought, when paintings are made to match a living room wall, and whole novels can be constructed by ChatGPT, what is the collective value of our cultural endeavours? With so much junk who will then write a lucid clear-eyed history of our public culture today? Will it only be a muddled rehash of conflicting rhetoric: opinions, beliefs, and personal factoids, where copies of computer-generated Mona Lisas mix with photoshopped landscapes of the Himalayas? In a world glutted with too much information, too much mechanical art, and too many unreadable books, the consequences of our acceptance of the mediocre will in the long term cause a cultural blurring, an inability to see quality when it does appear. The brilliant book will be overlooked by the publishers because they are busy promoting their new author who has written a novel entirely on WhatsApp. The old stone sculpture will be removed, and in no time replaced by a Disney caricature.
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As the saying goes, if things are too easy, they are probably not worth doing. Socrates was not in a position to Google information on Greek philosophy but had to rely on his own innate arguments to discover it. Does the artist similarly rely on long-developed skills to construct the painting? Does the writer know from experience whether his words carry enough weight to make the book a valuable read? The selective nature of writing, editing and publishing—done by three separate agents—once ensured that only the thoughtful well-crafted work would be set in bookstores, only the freshly experimental painting would hang in a gallery. Rejected art, returned manuscripts, and film scripts on dusty shelves, said much about the other work: work that was selected and allowed to see the light of day. The original sculpture, unforgettable art, brilliant films, and vivid books could then remain in public memory for eternity as future history and artefacts. Their unquestionable quality was the only guarantee of permanence. All else would erase like Snapchat.
Gautam Bhatia is a Delhi-based architect and sculptor.
