Have you noticed you don’t see Picasso anywhere online? Wasn’t he supposed to be the biggest and most important artist ever? Have you noticed nobody listens to Shonenberg but Bach is still popular? I think I have the answer but to start, let me start from start (twenty five centuries ago).
Quick summary of 2500 years of Art
Greeks were radical elitists. Work was slave stuff that required techne (art), doing techne was uncool but paying for it was fine. The rich didn't do Art but metaphysics, politics, war and art funding instead. That is, Art was a filthy thing free men paid for but, God forbid, never practiced.
At some point the rich got bored and began to do Art but of course, theirs had to be better so, their Art became Liberal Art (by and for freemen) while the lowly worker’s Art got rebranded as Craft.
The enlightenment hit hard and radical thinkers began the project of re-uniting Fine Arts and Crafts into big Art (as long as it served the people). Then the enlightenment went too far, heads rolled, and the Art reunification project was put on pause but... the rich felt ashamed for doing Liberal Arts.
Another century past and the elite were now so ashamed of pretty Liberal Art that they decided to create emancipated Art for emancipated peoples. That emancipated Art required breaking old Art ideas so, we got Picasso.
There you go, two thousand and five hundred years of Art (you are welcome); from slave stuff to past time for the rich to trying to reunite Art into one, universal, free, and liberating thing. Now, back to the article.
Modernist stuff
The internet has liberated the production of techne but the true revolution has been the liberation of promotion, taste and status. The Board, Like, and Share have killed all the big bets of the art vanguard and turned taste into an emergent property of the multitude.
Tate Modern funds, promotes and defines canon but it feels so detached from the hoi polloi, they are forced to have videogame retrospectives to get some eye balls. Has anyone noticed that it should have been the V&A (the museum of applied arts) the one to do that that Videogame retrospective but they didn't? Why the Tate Modern then? Because nobody cares about Modern Art and the only relevant contemporary Art is Craft.
Here is my thing, Modernism was radical in its project of artistic emancipation but elitist in its execution (IE the people didn’t like the output). Picasso was not a democratic phenomenon but a vanguard product. People didn’t really like Picasso and they only did when he meant status but once the status attached to Picasso disappeared, people stopped liking him. The proof is in Pinterest boards, nobody saves Picasso.
metamodernism is classical, kitsch and pretty
Go to digital gardening internet and you are going to find people collecting Pre-Raphaelite kitsch, 70s Hollywood, Botticelli, Pulp graphics, William Morris, Videogames, Cyberpunk, HipHop, Academicism, Medieval Crafts, and K-Pop before Picasso. Even smart people prefer ironic-not-ironic kitsch graphic design from 60s porn magazines to… Picasso.
When it comes to power, modernity has failed since we live in techno neo-feudalism and media-democracy but, when it comes to taste, we have won. We are as free we can be, poor in spirit (and means) but UGC rich and we liberated peoples have decided to ignore Picasso.
That being said, you could tell me popular contemporary taste is commercialised, behaviourally-scienced and un-free but I think that was only true in the 00s. Today’s taste is as free as it has ever been. The modest JPEG, Board and Playlist have truly emancipated taste (at least in its symbolic digital virtual form).
There is no practical kitsch anymore because there is nobody pointing fingers to call it kitsch (and even if there is, you have infinite virtual space to create your own fandom). There is no more taste vanguard, only a million cliques liking, saving and collecting in social media. Picasso didn’t survive user generated content liberation, the silly profound seriousness of modernism didn’t and even the institutional importance of post-modernism didn't survive either and I think this is all a net good.
Or maybe I am very wrong and by living in my immaculately curated (by the algos and yours truly) aesthetic bubble, I am seeing what I want to see. But if that were true, it would mean we plebs can effectively run away from Picasso and this is also good.
I think Picasso is very dead for us consumer units but is Picasso important? I say he is not but institutions say he is so, what is it? Probably both, everything and anything really. Being and definitions can be hardcore, softcore, single or multiple online. This is the consumerist Metamodern ontological logic; Picasso can be great or terrible, it does not matter as long as you don’t make him political because he is just an image in an online board.
Although… let me take a stance and remain firmly entrenched with the serfdom taste revolution: Picasso is an artificial cultural elite creation and his stuff is forgetable and ugly, as ugly as the XX century. Good riddance. Now go guilt-free and save some 80s Anime or some maximalist graphic design on your Are.na board, bring some beauty into the world.
Obligatory addendum on AI
AI is flooding the world with slop but it is also further liberating taste and meaning and this is why I am bullish on it. I collect AI art, I use AI art and I push for it in my projects. I firmly believe more liberated art means more AI art.