Spectacle Vs. Substance

Increasingly, art is treated less as a dialogue with history, ideas, or the human condition, and more as an event—a flash meant to seize attention in the briefest window possible. Installations are engineered to be “Instagrammable,” their worth measured in the number of phones raised to capture them rather than the thought they provoke. These works strive to surprise and astonish audiences, but their effect rarely lingers beyond the novelty of the moment. What was once the role of art—to unsettle, to reveal, to endure in the mind like a haunting refrain—has, in many cases, been hollowed out into a game of short-lived impressions. The shock, the gimmick, the glossy surface: all of it evaporates once the next spectacle arrives. This reflects a deeper cultural hunger for immediacy. The art object is no longer a vessel of contemplation but a consumable designed to keep pace with the attention economy. Where once the measure of greatness was whether a work could speak across decades, centuries even, now it is judged by its ability to hold an audience for the span of a scrolling thumb. The consequence is a cycle of art that feeds on novelty, leaving little behind but the faint aftertaste of a momentary distraction.

The absence of rational thought and purpose makes the work produced become self-centered displays of chaos that serve no purpose beyond their own existence. Their ability to grab attention ends quickly since they present only brief novelty experiences to viewers. What they lack is the subtlety and depth that comes from carefully reigning in the chaos, shaping it, and giving it purpose. True artistry lies not in surrendering to disorder but in mastering it, in distilling chaos into something meaningful and relatable. It’s in the collision of the rational and the raw—of careful intent and sudden impulse—that art sheds its ornamental skin and becomes something vital, something profound. Only when chaos is tempered with intention does it achieve its complete artistic potential to generate works that engage viewers emotionally and intellectually, works that endure in the minds and hearts of those who experience them.

Many artists today, particularly those hustling for algorithmic approval on Instagram or seeking rapid entry into the gallery circuit—seem to conflate mimicry with genuine meaning. It’s almost comical from the outside looking in. Public galleries, especially in London, seem to have devolved into overpriced pop-up shops for the aesthetically indifferent instead of places of genuine artistic enquiry. You walk in off the street hoping to be challenged or moved, but instead you encounter walls of superficially polished works that offer little to no depth or originality. Most of it looks the same, and most of it looks to have been mass produced, lacking the care and reflection that characterises enduring art. Unfortunately we live in a time where quantity has steamrolled quality; originality and conceptual rigor have often taken a backseat to whatever can be monetised by the next day or week. And don't get me wrong, of course there are exceptions to this drabness—but they’re rare, it’s like finding a good mango at a supermarket in the UK. Most are shit. Most seem designed less to provoke engagement or reflection and more to flatter the eye or appease collectors. The prevailing trend is art that functions as a commodity first and a medium of human expression second: investment pieces with price tags rather than works with soul.

We are also experiencing a new phenomenon—the influencer artist, whose entire creative output feels like a branding exercise. Bad Basquiat Bootleggers. ‘Sadboi’ Impressionists. Clout-Chasing Conceptualists. Their feeds are a steady stream of mimicry as self-expression, parroting the aesthetics of depth without the experience that give it weight. It sometimes seems like their entire creative existence replies solely on the interactions they get on Instagram. It’s also increasingly common to encounter so-called “click-bait” content, where artists employ gimmicks, staged absurdities, or deliberate factual inaccuracies in order to generate engagement. This approach carries inherent risks: it fosters a reliance on external validation, and when the metrics of likes and shares diminish, the intrinsic satisfaction and meaningful connection with the work itself often erodes alongside them. It seems their entire creative existence relies on the interactions they get on Instagram, and they put in as minimal amount of effort as possible, so they can do the ‘reveal’ and garner more views and comments. Most of which are some form of rage bait. Oh, and did I mention it’s ‘cool’ now to have trauma of some sorts? Yeah, that's right. It’s also become common to display your carefully constructed trauma arc to gain even more attention and optimised engagement: a reel here, a melancholic stare there, some brushstrokes over trap beats, and boom—instant artist. Now, it’s not just that their work is derivative. It’s that it’s hollow. They’ve taken the iconography of expression and hollowed it out into a set of gestures that point toward meaning without ever actually touching it. Thus, what we’re witnessing isn’t a wave of raw creativity—it’s merely a cosplay. Hollow, unearned, and market-friendly.

Now, if the Instagram bootleggers weren't bad enough, then read no further. Nah but seriously, it gets worse. We’ve also been graced with the presence of the “emotional performance artists”, the pantomime cousins of the bootleggers and sadboi’s— you know—the ones that stand solemnly before their canvas, eyes wide shut, waiting for the crescendo of a pre-selected soundtrack to ‘move’ them. As the music swells, they launch into a melodramatic frenzy; smearing prearranged blobs of paint like they’re channeling some sort of divine energy. Five seconds later, they step back, misty-eyed, and declare it a masterpiece. No style. No substance. No thing. Just cringe. If it were in fact, just the spark—the messy beginning of something more considered—then fine, I’m all for it. But it isn’t. The smeared paint is the final product. And worse—they’re designed for the algorithm, not the artwork itself. And I genuinely feel for anyone conned into buying such nonsense.

Sticking to the realm of ‘emotional performative art’ is one of the most infamous examples that you see today. The “trapeze painter”, an artist who dangles upside down over a spinning canvas, dumping buckets of obnoxiously bright paint while centrifugal force does the rest. The end result is not a painting. Sure it uses paint to occupy a canvas, but is that really all the requirements needed for it to be a painting? The suitable name I can think of is a visual migraine. A violent technicolour purge, as if the canvas rejected every subtle idea it was ever fed. And yet, this particular person has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers through the ‘show’ rather than the actual work. This is the pivot point where performance eclipses craft. What’s being sold is not the art itself, but the theatre of its making—a spectacle designed to hold attention for a moment, before the emptiness beneath begins to show. The main reason people attend art events is to experience the spectacle rather than the artwork itself. But even circuses get boring after the fiftieth show. The comment section reveals a tired atmosphere through sarcastic remarks and hateful messages and complete mocking of others. Everyone’s seen the trick before. This is the sort of ‘art’ that adorns start-up tech company lobbies: it’s boisterous and superficial while desperately seeking attention like an unattended toddler who throws tantrums because he doesn’t get what he wants. The artwork exists solely as filler, not as a masterpiece—meant to mask emptiness rather than provide substance. A decorative placeholder, masquerading as meaning, designed to be looked past rather than looked at.

Scathing reviews. I know and I’m sorry, but I’m hoping that these critiques can help to prevent people reading this from falling into the same trap as these so-called artists. And look, even with these harsh critiques, I’m in no way saying that every artist needs to be a revolutionary or some sort of prodigy. But there’s a difference between work that emerges from genuine inquiry and work that exists solely to be consumed. The problem isn’t that the art is bad (though, often, it is)—it’s that it’s dishonest. The system operates as performance dressed up as process. The system mimics the surface gestures of art-making—messiness, emotion, abstraction—without any of the hard, internal labour those gestures used to imply external appearance of artistic work through its disorganised and abstracted and emotional nature but it lacks the actual effort that these gestures originally required. It’s a kind of pantomime, played out in curated studio shots and poetic nonsense in captions. You’re not looking at someone’s soul—you’re looking at their content strategy.

And along with these scathing, albeit, fair criticisms, I have to give credit where it’s due—at least these artists ARE creating something. It takes a certain level of confidence—or perhaps in these cases, obliviousness—to put oneself out there. But I can’t help but wonder: how can they be content with producing such soulless, derivative work? Are they truly passionate about what they're doing? Or is it simply a bid for attention, driven by the pursuit of view counts and the dopamine rush of virality? I can tell you from experience, that rush can be addictive. If it weren't for my own distaste in many social media platforms, I may too have fallen into this trap. It seems, for many, the goal isn’t to create something meaningful or lasting—it’s to provoke a reaction, whether positive or negative. It seems for many that the goal isn't to create something meaningful or lasting, but merely to provoke a reaction. Positive or negative, who cares? At least my reel is blowing up lol [insert rolling eyes emoji]. It’s a disheartening trend, and it seems to be a race to the bottom; where visibility trumps value, and where the metrics of success are measured in likes and shares rather than integrity and mastery. While platforms like Instagram have undoubtedly democratised access to art and provided opportunities for countless creators, they’ve also incentivised a culture of surface-level engagement, where spectacle overshadows sincerity and imitation masquerades as inspiration. The result? A deluge of content that's loud and attention-grabbing, but lacks the depth and soul that makes art truly resonate on a deeper level. The most important thing for artists who want to lean more into the chaotic than the rational is to identify and formulate a method to the madness. Don’t just become a clone of an artist because you like their work, and don't just make a visual cacophony. Create something that is undeniably You. This is the landscape we’re left with: galleries selling wall decor to hedge fund babies, Instagram rewarding artists for speed over sincerity, and a generation of creators stuck playing dress-up in the ruins of authenticity. Somewhere along the way, the question stopped being “What does this mean?” and became “Will this sell?” And so now we scroll, we nod, we double-tap—and we forget. Because spectacle may grab your attention, but it never holds it.