Artists, geniuses, and incompetents

If I lift my beard, I feel the back of my neck
on my back; I have the chest of a harpy
and the dripping paintbrush on my face
makes it a colorful mosaic.
I'm carrying the whole back of my body in my belly now,
That counterbalances the buttocks like a rump
And it won't even let me see where I'm stepping.

This is how Michelangelo described what it meant for him to spend four years hanging from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, working for most of the day, barely eating, to paint his masterpiece. Only with such dedication, perseverance, and rigor—essential ingredients for impressing patrons like the Medici, who funded such marvels and are precisely better known for their patronage of the arts than for their innovations in banking, notes economist Saifedean Ammous—can one understand a creation of this magnitude and the success and enduring legacy that geniuses like him achieved.

In the past, and not so long ago as the middle of the last century, no one had the opportunity to be called an artist without years of grueling work. Beethoven, for example, never claimed to be a genius nor pontificated about how his music was better than anyone else's. Only since the CIA propelled unknown abstract expressionists out of obscurity did more and more artists begin to lecture the public with airs of superiority and pedantry about what art is and why their lazy creations are so profound.

The Italian conceptual artist Piero Manzoni created a total of 90 cans filled with his feces and labeled them with: Artist's shit . Each can has an estimated value of between $100,000 and $150,000.

This trend has multiplied exponentially since the widespread adoption of social media. Millions of people have taken to sharing their creations, connecting with others, and accessing opportunities like never before. While a minority undoubtedly earns recognition, humbly standing out outside the corrupt structure of major galleries and art museums—veritable protected monopolies on artistic taste—the reality is that the majority lack the practice, the ideas, the training, the drive, and often even the most basic need or passion behind any worthwhile work of art. After all, why value beauty, permanence, or creative impulse when there are artists handpicked by a fraudulent system, like Basquiat, Koons, or Hirst, who become millionaires overnight? The pool of imitators with no other desire than immediate recognition and fame is abundant in this society of immediacy where we have been led to believe that anything can be art from the moment there is the possibility of commodifying it and sacrificing it on the altar of our almighty God of money.

A cleaning woman at an Italian gallery accidentally threw away $15,000 worth of "artwork" by modernist Paul Branca consisting of crumpled newspaper, cardboard, and cookies scattered on the floor.

This explains two things. The first is that today there is an abundance of crap—and, as Fernando Sánchez Dragó pointed out, pardon the apt word, since garbage is recycled and crap is not—created by incompetents in a matter of hours. Or minutes, given that artificial intelligence now allows anyone to slap on the label of artist simply by downloading an app. The second is the blatant absence of masterpieces that can be compared to the wonders of not-so-distant times. Obviously, however much effort, temperament, and passion one puts into it, being a genius is within the reach of very few, but it is no less true that none of them rose to prominence without spending their entire lives learning the technique, the details, striving to surpass the abilities of others, and perfecting works that we continue to admire today.

In this sense, one has to wonder who, in a few decades, will remember postmodern art monuments like glasses on the floor, an unmade bed, a horse hanging from the ceiling, or a random assortment of pixels recreating an ape. Brilliant works that see the light of day so that, as always, a few beneficiaries, far removed from anything resembling productive activity, can line their pockets at the expense of others who yearn to display their status and uniqueness with the latest absurdity.

Different versions of the Bored Ape from the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection. Two of them sold for $1.1 million.

All of this is symptomatic of our system's decline into pure simulation, institutionalized charade and farce, with a bleak political order and a prostituted culture that increasingly fails to deserve the name. The positive aspect is that history is cyclical, and periods of mediocrity and obscurantism often give way to those of genius and flourishing. When such a general change as essential as art is to humanity will occur is impossible to know. Because without art, we wouldn't know what the past was like, and there would be no way to express ideas, emotions, imagination, memories, and thoughts, as the editor Hatje Kantz explained. Therefore, whether in an ocean of vulgarity and filth or in the worst totalitarian climates, there will always be people who draw, write, paint, design, sculpt, film, program, conceive, or compose, because without doing so, they would go mad. And among these creations, works will always emerge that are both a testament to an era and culture and timeless and universal. Works that seem impossible or possess a simplicity that reflects the mastery of decades of constant practice. Works that speak to the very soul of humankind. Works that move us and lift us far beyond the routine of our lives, both ennobling us and humbling us. Because if life without music would be a mistake, as Nietzsche said, life without genuine art would be more than that. It would be inconceivable.