There used to be a time when art was not limited to social media posts or museums. Art was once cherished from the heart, it was felt from the soul, and it was appreciated with kindness and respect and also with honesty. Unlike present times, art was not a matter of a like or a comment, but it was something related to the emotion of the creator and the feelings of the observer. With the developments coming with time, our lives have drastically changed, and we’ve lost multiple things with time and true art, and the people who used to love art are one of the lost values and things that, despite all the technologies and advancements, we can’t get back until we feel its absence in our souls.

State of artists in the present world:

The present world runs with speed, and we are overstimulated, but our inspiration has died somewhere. We like things that seem to be aesthetic without actually looking for the context, we go for the outer beauty and popularity and not with the beauty of the story, and we only care about trends and not for emotion. Silence where art is born and cherished is now lost somewhere in between algorithms, fake aesthetics and noise that lacks empathy and vulnerability. Being an artist is not a blessing anymore; instead, it feels more like a curse. Artists are full of emotions and feelings, and they are bound to feel every single thing in the world that doesn’t feel at all. It’s creating the piece in fear only to see the fear become true. An art is born when feelings get neglected, and when that same art also gets neglected, it can tear the soul of that artist into millions of pieces. It can be a painting, a poem or some craft; an artist poured his soul into the project, but the people no longer appreciate it or even observe it because it was not trendy enough. Art is not a trend; it’s not about making good edits and selecting trendy music, and adding a great caption with lots of hashtags. Art is raw; it’s like bleeding on paper, it’s breaking and rebuilding at the same time. Art is wild, unlike today’s world, art is slow; it takes time, and it demands time.

Art and artists in the present world are either polluted with the demands of the algorithm, or they are not able to create an artistic piece in a world where art holds no value. Few who still create are underrated and are not appreciated enough.

A comparison between art and so-called art:

Unlike today, art was not created for likes or comments in ancient times, but each piece of art had a purpose; it was expressing a story or a feeling of the artist, but today art is used to get exposure and the values of being an artist are completely compromised. Art was as holy as a spiritual ritual. An art was created to express and not to impress. It was to hold a memory or to get fame. For ancient artists earth was the canvas, and time itself was their audience. They painted the walls of caves not for getting applause but to communicate with nature or to pass their legacy on to future generations. The question that used to lurk in the minds of ancient artists was “what do I need to express”, and not “how to make it viral” like modern artists. It’s not about the soul anymore, but it’s about the trend or the algorithm. Ancient art was slow and painful. Today, artists post their so-called art endlessly. With constant posts and regular creation, and within the noise of engagement, the silence where art is born is nowhere to be seen. Art needs to be processed and not progressed. Art needs to be raw and not edited. Art needs to be what the creator wants to show and not about what the audience needs to see. Art is not art anymore. Actual art is dead and long forgotten, and present so-called art is more like a commodity or a product. Art was born to be felt and to be remembered, unlike today. We now just see, consume and forget. We are not creating now; instead, we are performing. Artists nowadays are shouting in the void instead of listening to the silence.

Is it art or our emotions that are lost?

People of the present world are highly connected with materialistic or fake things and deeply disconnected from their actual inner selves. A person is not supposed to witness every tragedy and event happening in the world, yet here we are, scrolling through multiple posts in a day. Tragedy in one scroll. A meme in the next. A friend’s heartbreak. A stranger’s filtered vacation. A news headline about war. A 10-second ad for lipstick. We stuff ourselves with unnecessary content up to the point of emotional exhaustion. It’s a common thought to happen in an overstimulated world. If our mind starts feeling every single thing, then it will collapse. So our mind works in survival mode. It cares, but not enough to act. It reacts, but only for a moment. We have selective empathy, as with the unnecessary knowledge that we’ve surrounded ourselves with; our mind stops feeling after a certain level, and it simply numbs itself or shuts down. It’s not only overexposure but the constant distraction of mobiles, and endless content that distract us from our own selves, and we avoid our inner truth. We don’t sit in silence, we don’t process emotions, we don’t let the pain linger. We prefer using social media over feeling. Feeling sad? Let’s open YouTube. Feel like crying? Maybe I should scroll Instagram. This digital world has become an escape from reality, and in this, we have lost our emotions. We don’t have many artistic souls as well. As we have traded our feelings over performance. It’s not about expressing anymore, it’s about how aesthetic the filter on the post is. It’s not about the grief that the content holds, but it’s surely about the hashtags that the caption has. In the past, life was slow, and emotions were hard. Nowadays the life is fast, and emotions are artificial or curated. In our way to make lives easier, we stopped feeling because it’s easy not to feel. Our world is so quick to consume yet so slow to understand. But in this fast world where people are almost unable to feel, there are some souls still left who choose not to run with the pace of the world, and they decide to feel, and when they create, they create out of ache and not for the sake of applause. They go unseen in this world. But they matter a lot. These are the people who show us what it means to be real in a world that is obsessed with pretending. They remind us about all the forgotten emotions and deserve to be seen and not disappear. Some artistic souls that are left will eventually break, some will vanish, and some will maybe die with their talents being unnoticed throughout their lives. But each painting and each book or each poem created by a true artist will carry the legacy of art for many generations,

“Art is the soul’s memory — it outlives the body, the noise, and even the time it was born into. Long after we are gone, it still speaks for us.”

.    .    .