The Myth of Art

Art does not audition. It does not genuflect before gallery gods or algorithmic altars. It is what happens when a sentient mammal stumbles upon a pattern and decides to riff—no applause required, no metrics consulted, no gospel to spread. Art is not sacred, nor is it special. It is not a sacrament to be blessed by curators or critics. It is a flower blooming in the dark, indifferent to bees, branding, or the buzz of recognition.

Hang a painting in a forest and let the moss annotate it. Let the wind offer its own critique. It remains art—unblemished by foot traffic or footnotes. Put it in a gallery and it becomes a billboard for the artist’s ego. Better to hang the artist’s insecurities in the gallery, since it’s the media that turns pigment into pedigree. Or perhaps we should hang the gallery itself, frame and all, in the forest. Let it learn humility from the trees.

Art can carry messages, but messages are better at carrying messages. Art is best when it carries nothing but itself—like a cat walking across a keyboard, composing a sonata of accidental genius. When art is adjusted to fit the requirements of media, popularity, or world-saving ambition, it enters a propagandic cul-de-sac: a marvelous phrase coined only when the focus is on the phrase, not the coin.

If your art needs recognition, it’s not your art that’s hungry—it’s your self-esteem. If you need to leave a mark, ask yourself why you fear being unmarked. If you’re using art to preach, explain why Jesus didn’t doodle parables on papyrus. The gospel doesn’t need a gallery. Nor does your soul.

The famous artist logs into the Fame Simulator™ each morning to check their relevance index. Today’s score: 7.3 out of 10, downgraded due to insufficient controversy. They consider tweeting something vaguely political, but the algorithm prefers scandal with a side of skincare. Meanwhile, the unknown artist brews coffee and paints a fern. No one claps. The fern is thrilled.

Decide: do you want to be an artist, or a famous artist? One creates. The other curates their own mythology. One treasures the process. The other polishes the plaque. Here’s to the unknown artist, still small enough to treasure the work over the echo. To hell with the bottom line. To hell with the metrics. To hell with the curated self.

“Once men sang together round a table in chorus; now one man sings alone, for the absurd reason that he can sing better. If scientific civilization goes on (which is most improbable) only one man will laugh, because he can laugh better than the rest.” — G.K. Chesterton

Harry Handelbar

Harry is a recovering satirist, part-time philosopher, and metadata tinkerer. His archive spans two decades of metaphysical mischief, theological punchlines, and poetic nonsense. He believes in satire’s transformative power, the elegance of expressive metadata, and recursion—once writing a poem that never ended and a script that crashed browsers.