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Alicia Kenworthy's avatar

There really is a discernible difference when art comes from a "real" place. I even notice this with text messages I send. Say I text someone "I love you" at a time I'm acutely feeling it: it lands different than if I text while I'm lying to myself or otherwise not connected to the words I'm writing. The person on the receiving end shouldn't be able to perceive that, and yet.

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Samuél Lopez-Barrantes's avatar

I've been to a few photography exhibitions in trendy Parisian galleries over the past few weeks and even just writing those words belies the problem with so much of "popular" art these days: so much of it seems to be about the image and the striving to *appear* to be something more than the sum of the parts. Which makes it extremely depressing (this is why "Triangle of Sadness" is such an important commentary on this age).

Thanks for a fantastic essay that opens up a neverending dialogue about why it's so often the wealthy who end up dictating what is considered worthwhile. They're wrong, of course-this is when the occasional Warhol or Basquiat come along and break through the veneer talking about something real--but this inevitably brings up the question of the danger of commercial success for an artist in an era when celebrity is valued over humble quietness, which is exactly what Warhol was speaking out against, and surely part of why Basquiat never made it to thirty ... and boy oh boy, do we ever now have our fifteen minutes of fleeting fame.

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