Recent events have led me to the conclusion that a depopulation agenda is growing more popular among the creeps who rule over us. It’s not a stretch for these self-absorbed, corrupt elites (parasites) to think the world would be a far better place if billions of deplorables (us) would just vanish from the face of the earth. Eugenics has been around a long time, but until recently, the means to depopulate the world did not exist, now it does. Increasingly, the people in charge do not have the skill, patience, intelligence and experience of the old-style professionals who know how to manage difficult problems and are willing to put in the work to fix them. The experienced, competent managers running our increasingly complex, technological, post-industrial nation are giving way to university-credentialed sociopaths with one simple-minded thought - “Exterminate all the brutes”.
As the saying goes; “to a hammer, every problem looks like a nail” and these days, the elites running the world are hammers and the rest of us are nails.
This situation has prevailed visually in the fine art world for some time. For many years, artwork has been increasingly depopulated. Most drawings and paintings I see these days days have little or no people in them. Abstract paintings, are one obvious example, but also representational art too. Artists from previous eras, like Gainsborough, Canaletto and Van Gogh, Norman Rockwell filled their paintings with people, sometimes lots of people.
Contemporary artists paint scenes of trees, buildings, sky, oceans, but oddly, no people. Genre painters are an exception, but the contemporary world that most of us inhabit, the suburban landscape of subdivisions, highways, strip malls and parking lots is rarely depicted in paintings and drawings. Portrait painters mainly work from photos and their lone subjects often look lonely and depressed. I’m not showing examples of these paintings, because they are ubiquitous and I don’t want to seem like I’m ridiculing them. There are likely many reasons for the lack of people, here’s some that I think caused the depopulation of contemporary art.
Part of the problem is that universities and art schools churn out credentialed artists who never learned to draw the human form. Art schools have “Life Drawing” classes where students draw nude models, but the next step, drawing clothed people is a rarity these days.
Another problem is the collapse of the publishing industry that used to pay artists to illustrate contemporary scenes, caricatures, portraits etc. Illustrators used to be able to make a good living - now, with rare exception, that way of making a living is joining the growing ranks of obsolete occupations.. Artificial Intelligence will make the business of creating illustration by hand even more difficult.
But, people still love art and people still go to art festivals and galleries and buy paintings. But the sort of painting these people buy are mostly decorations to hang over sofas or fill up blank walls in office hallways or waiting rooms. Decorations can’t be too interesting. People are too interesting.
A big problem for the contemporary artist is the contemporary human form, often obese, tattooed, wearing cheap, mass-produced ill-fitting clothing, festooned with corporate logos. Very often, people are in cars or staring at cell phones. Contemporary landscapes are also a problem. Downtown sidewalks are often filthy and populated with the homeless in tents. Empty, boarded-up storefronts. Office towers devoid of workers. Advertisements, 5G antennas and surveillance cameras. Not a pretty picture.
So what’s an artist to do? Speaking for myself, I like people and I like drawing people in all their shapes and forms… even if those drawings are sometimes disturbing.
Somebody has to do it.
Insects and birds have also experienced a population decline... Fish, too.
Still plenty of fucking assholes around, though!