Art Today: Between Illusion and Reality
- Arson .
- Aug 4
- 3 min read
Reflections of a French pop and contemporary sculptor on Art today.
Art – that word that makes eyes shine, that inspires so many projects, dreams, exhibitions.
For a long time, I believed, sincerely and fervently, that my role was to open the doors of my universe to everyone, without distinction or social or economic barriers. I thought that art, as a pop and contemporary sculptor, could be a bridge between worlds, a breath of fresh air in everyday life, regardless of the condition of the person who looks, who feels, who questions.
But after years of exhibiting, sharing, and debating, I have to face the facts: Art Today is not accessible to everyone. Rich or poor, it doesn't matter, if they have never encountered art history or been raised with a taste for "beauty." Perhaps because, precisely, beauty and art require culture, initiation, and an apprenticeship in sensibilities and codes.
I have long advocated democratic art, art accessible to all.
But today, I'm rethinking my position. In a society that is multiplying contemporary art research centers, funded at great expense by taxes, we find ourselves faced with institutions where art obeys imposed codes: insertion, integration, gender... as if it were always necessary to justify the creative act by a social, political, or identity value, in the manner of current societal doctrines.
Art has become the playground of institutional apparatuses.
LArt-Aujourd'hui is obliged to participate in the reflections on "insertion" or "inclusion," categorical obsessions that often relegate the search for beauty, true emotion, and aesthetic surprise or meaning to the background. A "Societal" art or nothing!
We have created CRACs* where public money is used to finance speeches.
Speeches that claim to be emancipatory but end up formatting, homogenizing, even neutralizing, under the guise of diversity, by imposing societal norms that are better respected under penalty of prosecution. Anything goes to create a single way of thinking, not to disturb minds by offering them a discourse that disrupts the norms, in a society where we must tolerate the normalization of the abject and make the particularities of minorities the rules to be adopted, under the guise of freedom, flouted and forbidden when it comes to contradicting these new norms.
I no longer believe that it is possible to offer a "different" art to the anesthetized people, nor even to demand its democratization.
Art is not a universal remedy, nor a magic potion that can be distributed to raise awareness.
Like any foreign language, it requires learning, patience, and curiosity. And not everyone has the desire or the ability to embark on this journey. Football, and sport in general, soothes and calms consciences much more easily.
Today, I prefer to address those who want, who are searching, who are ready to open up, to learn, to let themselves be disturbed. It is no longer a question of believing that everything is possible, but of accepting that art, by nature, is a winding path, sometimes elitist, often demanding, and always subjective.
The true luxury of art lies neither in its price nor in its ease of access:
The luxury of art lies in the time and attention we are willing to give it, in the ability to dream, to reflect, to let ourselves be carried away. If we do not have this openness to the imagination or to thought, then, without doubt, art is not for us.
*CRAC: Contemporary Art Research Center
(Because we must " search " for Art and learn to make and create ugliness, in the image of the world.)
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