“Art is dead.” Again and again—and yet art is a phoenix, rising from the ashes of each new panic. Yet, every time the cycle comes around, people lose their minds over it. Nothing new here. Rinse, again.
Flash back to 1839, and some man sees the picture and decides the painting is finished. And today we know how wrong he was in that assessment. Painting didn’t die – it got weird. Like, seriously weird, and in the best way. Impressionism arose, realists showed up with melting clocks, and abstract artists basically threw the rule book into the blender. The whole movement felt like one big collective rant at realism: “You want a perfect copy of reality? Great. We’re going to do anything but that.”
Now here we are again, except this time the GPUs are doing the heavy lifting. Some friends win an art contest with Midgernie and the internet immediately starts pouring in praise. Take a deep breath – it’s too early, and we’ve danced to a similar tune before.
That said, that doesn’t mean disruption isn’t real. Real people are seeing their incomes shrink while a small group of tech-savvy creators and platforms are making big bucks.
And while history says that art lives on, it pretty much guarantees that the ride will be bumpy.