People who eat architectural pork chops on a daily basis are not used to rare victuals. MSN disgusts them as much as the sight of octopus on a plate that a waiter brought them by mistake during an all-inclusive vacation in Turkey. I look at the building with sympathy despite the heckling. I fear that it is one of the last representatives of its species to be built in this part of the world. A joyful architecture of monumental boomerism. An affirmation of a world that still believes in some future. What can I add. Uff. I'm glad they made it in time.
Once the world enters a spiral fueled by a galloping demographic, geopolitical catastrophe and driven by the whip of artificial intelligence, we will be able to look at this beautiful white edifice, which by then will probably be covered with a patina that brings out its brutalist beauty, and sigh: "Eh, those were the days when people's concern was whether it was beautiful or not," and a tear will turn to the eye. And until then , the dogs bark, the caravan drives on, and now to a large extent the future fate and perception of this museum will depend on what will be inside the interiors of this edifice, and I must add that I am not so completely calm about this outcome. In order to properly assess what this museum will be for us, it is already necessary to consider what art will be in the future. This cannot be assessed only in the context of a big white suitcase into which we will throw some expensive junk and go with it to the circus to sell tickets.
I believe that art in the world is in crisis. It's a crisis of two kinds. First, modern art is already very old and often talks about the same thing over and over again, using basically the same tools all the time in anticipation of a revolution. The second problem is a crisis of abundance, which is not followed by quality. Artists are reaching for more and more personal contexts, while there are millions of them. These are very contradictory trends that look like noise from afar, discouraging the viewer from approaching such art more closely. And this is not just my opinion. Just look at a lot of Banksy's work, which mercilessly mocks this art and its eaters, bringing them down to the first floor.
I subconsciously feel that the current era in art, which has lasted for more than a century, is coming to an end, it has to come to an end. I am of those who believe very strongly in artificial intelligence and its consequences; I have never doubted that it will destroy us socially. We are just now approaching AGI's doomsday: we will look at the artificial intelligence created by ourselves as if it were a burning mirror showing the image of ourselves, but stripped of all delusions about ourselves. The image we'll see may change people once and for all, exposing our predictability, including the generic nature of many aspects of art that we unfoundedly thought were some incomprehensible creative attributes of our souls. It will be upsetting, but freeing.
the dogs bark, the caravan goes on
© One Hundred Years of Planning
In recent years I have been devoting a lot of time to generative AI, following its progress and watching the art community boil and boil in contact with this wave that is devouring their fields of work. The most common reaction today is still denial and denial, but it is becoming increasingly clear that this applies to artistic parochialism. But the coffee table. Many artists today are making money from their art in ways that in a few years will no longer be a self-sustaining process. These people will fight and try to stop time. There will also be those who will ride the same wave. Finally, there will be some excitement. It will be an epic clash on the scale of the transition from the Gothic to the Renaissance. We live in really interesting times.
On a less optimistic note: I also see the moment when art education as we know it will collapse. To become an artist in adulthood, you used to have to grab crayons, dulcimers or plasticine as a child, but between one and the other there is a whole arduous and difficult road of education and talent discovery and development. I think AI will hollow out a huge crater in front of young people at the beginning of this staircase of self-realization, because which child will take up art or music education, if by pasting in a few words today he can already run down, as from a factory belt, images that will completely saturate his young ambitions. Whether the next generation of artists will be born at all remains to be seen. There will certainly be far fewer of them. Perhaps in the future MSN's main task will not even be to present art itself, but to fill the hole before the new generation, to convince them that using their own brains still makes some sense. What's worse, it's unclear whether such a goal can be achieved at all.
I think that in Warsaw we have created a great magnificent edifice for art, which will be the arena of very dramatic changes in this art in the future - and I am very happy about this, and frightened at the same time. In this context, criticism of this edifice from the aesthetic side is nothing, it's not even a warm-up. It's just a banter between the ignorant coffee drinker, who drinks coffee from a sachet snatched at the checkout at Żabka, and the arabica lover, who has to grind the coffee just before brewing. This mocking of a drunk uncle at a wedding, why would a good pianist need an expensive piano when a Casio organ from OLX will suffice, this discussion is like the empty laughter of a ignoramus after reading the headline that "Einstein was wrong" on a clickbait site - it doesn't touch the core. One side is not equipped with the brain-sensory apparatus to enjoy this museum, the other is living in a bubble, thinking it has some kind of mission to convince those there of its opinion, which is by definition unfeasible, meanwhile, behind the edifice of this museum in the fog, far greater challenges and dangers are looming.Let's hope it doesn't turn out that this was the last ball of this carnival, and in the future this edifice will be renamed "The Last Art Museum" before everything is finally overgrown by the jungle.
Paweł Mrozek
more: A&B 12/2024 - THIRD CITIES,
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