Absolutely Modern

My mother sent me a link to a BBC “News” report about a Ghanaian toddler who is officially the world’s youngest artist. He has been ratified by Guinness World Records no less, and this means something.

Camus argued that art advances between two chasms, frivolity and propaganda, but then he wasn’t privy to conceptions of the “officially amazing”. Today, to be amazing, you must be for sale, and create ‘independently’ between nappy changes. No, Camus, great style doesn’t lie midway between the artist and his object. An artist need only crawl across an object and leave a trail behind him.

“What a load of shit!” I replied furiously, “These people are mocking us. And the tragedy is we’re so hypnotised we can’t see it. This will become a tedious debate about contemporary art, precocious talent, and, obviously, race, while those that use our media to see how we react to this garbage - to monetise our emotions, recalibrate their algorithms, and manipulate our compliance – laugh. It’s click bait. Ignore this unadulterated CRAP. And stop paying your licence fee!”

Amused, my mother carried on with her morning, while I immediately clicked back on the BBC website. I contemplated the smears. Certainly, they’re absolutely modern. I appreciate a one-year-old can’t articulate the liturgical purpose of art as a writer like Sherrard might, that “beauty is never divorced from that universal rhythm with which all life must be linked if it’s not to lapse into disintegration and pointlessness.” But I was curious to see how his PR team were doing. It turns out the gods we can celebrate here are hype, cash, and internationalism.

I get it. Art need not reveal the eternal truths behind our illusory materialism, progress has taken us beyond all wisdom, everywhere. Harmony is Japanese decluttering, Swedish flatpacks, and Ghanaian colour: Truth is the Universal Bourgeois.

The next day she photographed her newspaper. Another ‘pint-sized Picasso’ is on the market. A white one! Every dungaree-clad Stoke Newingtonian will be cycling to Cass Arts this afternoon (they rely on unsolicited Daily Mail updates from their mothers too!) and rolling their babies in high end acrylics this evening.

Frivolity or propaganda? I’d say the propagandization of frivolity. Ours is a world of desacralized slavish consumerism, our thoughts and tastes aren’t our own, they’re borrowed from and fed back into the machine, our only reason is to like and be liked.

My mother is still laughing, “Get those boys daubing, darling!” she squeals, “You might make some money!”