The Artist of the Future

Yet what they best represent is the current state of art, where artists must skillfully package themselves as products for buyers to consume.

It’s precisely the kind of work that is uncomfortable for most artists, who by definition concern themselves with what it means to be a person in the world, not what it means to be a brand.

Graphic design, the discipline of aesthetic production, is facing a crisis as it reconciles with catastrophic effects of network technology on its profitability. Even prolific designers who produce work with a characteristic original aesthetic are quickly copied. As their work is pillaged and reproduced downstream (leftstream), it becomes increasin... See more

We’re so familiar with this polarization, we regard it as if it were an inevitable fact of nature, rather than what it really is: a cultural and commercial failing. Ideally artists should absorb the best qualities of business and vice versa. Rather than seeing such qualities as opposed to what they stand for as artists or business people, they shou

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the current state of art, where artists must skillfully package themselves as products for buyers to consume.

Artists are agents of invention who attempt to change the dominant conventions (although many individuals operating under the rubric of "artist" have much more pedestrian and commercial goals.)

1.9.1 The avant-garde exposes, devalues, and alters existing conventions in search of new cultural arrangements that could provide new aesthetic experiences... See more

That labor amounts to constant self-promotion in the form of cheap trend-following, ever-changing posting strategies, and the nagging feeling that what you are really doing with your time is marketing, not art. Under the tyranny of algorithmic media distribution, artists, authors — anyone whose work concerns itself with what it means to be human — ... See more

Who thinks about the future today?

Brands after their own self-interests. Agencies after their own self-interests (or, if we’re lucky, after their clients’ interests). Employees in trendy offices surrounded by like-minded co-workers and like-minded networks, courting cookie-cutter clients with cookie-cutter visions of tomorrow.

At least, that’s who... See more