It’s “cringe” to care. It’s “weird” to try. Optimism and hope are childish. This sardonic irony has become the prevailing ethos of my generation, but because I was always too close to see it, it never appeared as a problem to me — it never appeared to me at all, and it was just the way things were. It wasn’t until I spent a gap year in Israel that I witnessed a stark contrast. There, I was taken aback by an unabashed optimism, an unironic hope for a better future, a country that loved itself and its people. This attitude could be dismissed as naive and tasteless — however, the results are undeniable. The people are happier, less anxious and feel like they are part of something greater than themselves. An alternative to the edgy-teenager zeitgeist of 21st-century America began to take shape, though it was never consciously articulated — until today when these two world views collided during a visit to the Museum of Modern Art.
“Wow, I really don’t like this,” I thought to myself as I wandered the second floor of the museum, home to its most contemporary pieces. The whole floor, to me, exuded exactly that aura of cynical hopelessness. It was disorienting and jarring. Flashing lights and loud noises assaulted my senses. It felt like a temple of nihilism, filled with prints made from dust and beard shavings and towering metal blocks, which seemed to physically weigh on my chest. Some pieces expressed an ugliness which was more than an antonym to “pretty” — it was to goodness itself. Nothing matters anyway, so why make something beautiful?
In these works, I saw my generation — sarcastic, depressed, thirsty for meaning but reluctant to seek it for fear of coming up empty-handed, a sort of blasé indifference to existence itself. Don’t try. Don’t care. Don’t dress up too much. Don’t invest in anything too much. There’s even a trend to shut off the “auto capitalization” feature of your phone because you can never not care enough! But where does that leave us? Well, the studies are fairly unambiguous — it leaves us more depressed, lonely and anxious than any generation in the past 100 years. That’s not to say these developments have not been without due cause. However, we are tasked with moving forward, with building a brighter future for ourselves and our children and we need hope to do that. The whole floor at the MoMA seemed like a mirror reflecting contemporary American culture, which some argue is the very purpose of art. However, I’d like to put forth an alternative suggestion.
The feelings of unease and darkness lingered until I reached my favorite painting in the museum — Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies.” I approached the piece with almost religious reverence, keeping my eyes on the floor until I entered the room that housed the massive masterpiece, so as to not catch a glimpse or a fragment of the work and “spoil” the wonder of the piece in its full and colossal grandeur.
“This is what art should be,” I thought.
One could argue that art should be an expression of the culture, but this fails to acknowledge that art is a stream that ultimately flows through the viewer. Art is the artist’s faucet of expression — but at the same time, also the viewer’s basin of reflection, where they seek inspiration and guidance and which, ultimately, colors their entire worldview. Because of this dual relationship, art is more than a reflection of the times by the artist. Because of the impact art has on the viewing public, it ultimately ends up defining our response to the times and our relationship to life itself.
The artist bears a responsibility beyond mere expression, which modern culture often seems to forget — to make something beautiful. Instead of perpetuating the haze of nihilism, which we seem to be engulfed in, art must transcend itself as a mere mirror and acknowledge the significant role it can play in inspiring and enlightening the audience.
Elie Esses is a freshman majoring in computer science.
Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the staff editorial.