Thread by @owenbroadcast

theres an unintuitive inverse relationship between art vibe that the society wants + general social vibe. when things are the worst people want to see something positive. if you just lived through ww2 and saw a thousand dead bodies you dont want to see a drawing of a dead body.

https://twitter.com/hostagekiller/status/1411483539372118020

it polarizes within individual artists, some naturally make stuff about their situation, like kathe kollowitz for example, while some take on this inverse effect i described above. but i do feel that in general, socially, for the masses, what i described is the case.

if i was locked in prison for life with my friend and i could show him one picture would i draw a bleak dark picture of the prison we were stuck in? personally i would not, probably.

then theres a secondary sub-layer of this where artists skillfully use this inverse relationship to address the actual problems in a subversive and unintuitive way. thats where it gets interesting imo because then you get the outward facing shell concealing something much deeper.

any art “rule” only applies in specific situations and has a million exceptions but this is a general theory i operate under. the historians can highlight whatever they want. on the folk level this is what i have personally observed.

my larger theory of skillfully using the format of popular art in general is based on a few exemplary items, one of which is the song ‘the tears of a clown’.

https://twitter.com/bombshell1984/status/1411657349257957378