The rules of the art world corrupt people in painless small ways that aren’t always obvious until things like personal injury or long term disabilities happen.
The whole concept of being an artist as something earned, rather than a natural compulsion to create is offensive beyond words, and insulting in a way that cuts deep, on a personal level.
It’s obvious to anyone who is a natural artist, that these ideas are not only untrue, but actively harmful to the psyche of anyone who believes in them. And people who are stuck in this mindset have never been either fortunate, or unfortunate enough to see past the capitalism driven veneer of the thing.
They’re like shackles in an organized institution of slavery that you, out of your own idealism and stupidity, volunteer to put on. It’s a cult. And one of the few named cults in art history, but despite what they tell you… it’s not the only way to see and understand art.
Why bind the artists? Easy. Because an artist that is unmoored from these rules and frameworks is dangerous. And everybody knows that.
Why do you think they’ve worked as hard as they have over the last century to make sure that Dadaism (those loveable little scamps!) and Surrealism are misunderstood by the larger culture?
Because they don’t like collages and melty compositions? Think again.
No. It’s ideas. Art can topple governments, inspire action, change the social tide. And if you just let people go around having chaotic unapproved ideas, it’s going to get in the way of your harmonious marketplace for selling banal, unthreatening art.
A marketplace that only runs smoothly, as long as the world stays the way it is. These facts are self-evident. It’s well established canon at this point in art history.
But I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know or suspect about establishment art.