Mediocrity for Millions
Mediocrity | NFTs | Russia
“Do you like this?” read the text from my father, one year ago.
He sent a picture of a digital collage called “Everydays — The First 5000 Days.” I had never seen it; and it made me grimace. I texted back:
“hmmm. Rather mediocre. Clever to show the Instagram life these days. But I don’t like it.”
That was prior to learning that somebody did like it, and paid —famously— USD $69 Million for the NFT piece. Just a non fungible token (a virtual artwork; a digital file). Not the physical piece. More on this later.
I find Beeple’s art brash and basic and mediocre. Yet the money he is earning is certainly not on a mediocre level. But is his art actually mediocre? Heidegger said that art is disclosure of truth. Or, more precisely. It is unconcealment. aletheia in Greek. Beeple’s art indeed discloses where we are as a society. If Andy Dixon exposes the love affair with wealth symbols, Beeple exposes our dysfunctional relationship with one another, with political power, with life itself.
Speaking of dysfunctional relationships: we are currently watching Russia’s Putin assert his will over / into a country that is the size of central Europe, with desirable resources, which has historically been Russian but has oriented itself towards Europe. Many mock Putin’s “delusions,” his self aggrandizement, his theories of Russia should be, the bizarre images of his meetings in spacious halls with faux Corinthian columns… see this photo by Alexey Nikolsky:
It would make a good painting. Contacts in Kyiv are reporting shelling on their neighborhoods, and are evacuating the city, leaving ablebodied young men behind. This is hardly the first sign of war in our times, nor the only active war. But the implications for the world are perhaps clearer than current conflicts elsewhere. If the West sits in abeyance, suggesting obeisance towards Russia, it would encourage the Middle Kingdom to quash Taiwan. Xi has already been encouraged by the sad shrugging the world has done in regards to Hong Kong.
Speaking of HongKong, and since this newsletter began as one about art for friends who had requested intros to more artists, there are very active art galleries in HK. Here is a beautiful painting from the late Chinese artist Chu Teh-Chun, through Opera Gallery’s HK house. Compare this to the Beeple painting. Chu’s painting is light pressing through random, frenetic elements, hinting at the possibility of peace and good.
So, back to Russia: really, there is nothing to mock about Putin: only a sober realization that too many around Putin have participated in the ever tightening circle of sycophants. And I suspect I am not entirely unfair in blaming all of Russia, despite the many Russians now speaking up. Something in their collective psyche allows for a strongman worship. Too many individuals in Russia (and elsewhere) implicitly honor As a Swiss, coming from a very horizontal society which does not worship anyone, I find this very sick. And yet, I know myself and my own mediocrity. The trouble with this kind of personal mediocrity is that it affects the whole.
Our individual courage, our individual failures, our individual values… these add up. So while we cannot change the immediate, we must remember that we do affect the long term.
Francis Bacon, towards the end of World War II created these three studies for figures at the feet of the Crucifixion. They represent the Greek’s mythological Furies. These punished human wrong doing. Look at these simple drawings. How effective. How full of rage, hate, and creeping intent. After 6 years of human-inflicted misery, Bacon was reminding viewers of how integral to the human story such human wrong doing is. They crucified Christ. They bombed each other. Gassed people groups. They developed nuclear weapons. And now, of course, we are threatening one another with those nuclear capabilities.
A few days ago, a doctor friend in Seattle said to me wearily, “You know, I am so tired of seeing the walking dead. So many vacant faces, on drugs. Zombies.” That is the issue I have with Beeple’s (and so many others’) art is that they are a regurgitation of what is already around us. Ugliness and zombie-like humans. It is a degradation of humanity. We need elevation of life’s moments (think Vuillard’s interiors— so full of mood, mystery, and meaning) and genuine calls to attention (like Picasso’s Guernica).
Yes, maybe Beeple’s art is brilliant. It does disclose a truth about the collective us. Here’s one (below) that makes me think of how we worship silliness. Mabye the Russians with their strongman worship are not so ridiculous.
But I think it fails to remind us that it is up to us now to decide what to do about the state of things. I find his art almost gleeful about our absurdity. This is what leaves his art mediocre for me. Where is the call to the individual to choose rightly?
“Habe Mut, dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen!” - Immanuel KantI was raised on this instruction of Kant’s. My grandfather tucked it into many a conversation we had about life. Courageously dare to think for yourself. Allow your own understanding to serve you. The trick is not only to think for oneself (which requires a radical honesty), but to live by it. How few of us do. No wonder the world is a mess.