On Fine Art
Fine art does not mean anything to anyone. It does not help the Cashier catch a break. It does not help the Janitor rinse their mops. Fine art prefers to feed the wealthy over the homeless.
Such art, as the neoliberal economy has concocted, places it in service of torture. Consider the working minority, who's every experience is a reminder that they are a second-class citizen to the world. The artworks that dissect such an injustice, what good does this have to the minority themselves? When every micro-aggression devalues their life less and less, must they then agonize over paintings of the very same? Of course this isn't so: These works of "art" are made solely for the privileged. It is a kind of oppression-tourism, a zoo for the comfortable. Such works do nothing for anyone.
Fine art is what, exactly? An analytical insight into culture, the likes of which are principally led by essays and journals in sociology? Is it to teach people to appreciate "the little things in life" by only taking notice of a small subsect of creativity? That it's ahead-of-its-time in a way that isn't relevant now, or before-its-time by addressing centuries long gone? Or perhaps the more likely answer, that it is a weightless construct for the middle class. Such adherents of "fine art" have as much hunger for hierarchy as hitler.
If Kant had any incredible foresight into the uselessness of "art", it is not because a general principle had proven him right, rather that such words had only pierced the possibility of "fine art". How incredible that so much money be poured into something that doesn't do anything, say anything, or make us feel anything or have any effect at all. What is retinally viewed on phones and the like have much more social impact and importance than the static objects that hang shamefully in ascetic-white galleries. Ask anyone what a Henry Moore, Elaine de Kooning or Hirst has done for them. You'll always get "nothing" as an answer.
Painting, in Leonardo's time, was a lowly craft. You cannot "elevate" anything. Throwing pigs into the sky won't make them fly better.