Not saying that you need to have struggled to make art, but when your existence, you life, has been easier than 99% of humanity, you aren’t going to be able to properly connect on a human level to that rest of humanity.
This is also why I think music artists who break through via connecting with people and current conditions end up being shit later on. Their success transforms their lives and they lose the connection they had struggle that allowed them to make that art in the first place. They were writing about their own experiences, and they continue to write about their own experiences later but it hits different because their conditions changed.
The politically well educated artists understand this and aim to keep their connection but many are very unaware of it.
It’s the same with traditional artists as well. A lot of art in galleries made by “big name artists” is incredibly vapid and empty, and only appeals to equally vapid and empty people, they feature such concepts like “Too much social media bad” or “War bad” no nuance, understanding or subtlety, just simple, basic, easy to digest, unchallenging slop. The execution is usually good, because they are usually quite skilled in the technical part of art, but the actual “meaning” and “empathy” parts are just atrophied. But big fancy art gallery pieces are made to appeal to the ultra rich who purchase them as tax write-offs, so it would make sense that it would need to be the same sort of vapid shit as above.
This is also why I think music artists who break through via connecting with people and current conditions end up being shit later on. Their success transforms their lives and they lose the connection they had struggle that allowed them to make that art in the first place. They were writing about their own experiences, and they continue to write about their own experiences later but it hits different because their conditions changed.
The politically well educated artists understand this and aim to keep their connection but many are very unaware of it.
It’s the same with traditional artists as well. A lot of art in galleries made by “big name artists” is incredibly vapid and empty, and only appeals to equally vapid and empty people, they feature such concepts like “Too much social media bad” or “War bad” no nuance, understanding or subtlety, just simple, basic, easy to digest, unchallenging slop. The execution is usually good, because they are usually quite skilled in the technical part of art, but the actual “meaning” and “empathy” parts are just atrophied. But big fancy art gallery pieces are made to appeal to the ultra rich who purchase them as tax write-offs, so it would make sense that it would need to be the same sort of vapid shit as above.