#fwiw I have a BFA from a private art school and worked as a commercial artist for 20+ years

[wolfhollow]

I am really glad to see a lot of folks in the tags on this post who understand that the "fuck the audience" movement means "fuck the bullshit assumed audience critic in the back of your brain" and not literally ignore your audience and get pissy when you don't get the reaction you want. lol. My understanding is that it is a response in particular to a type of critic common in fandom that wants to enforce their own ideas of moral purity on a work or an artist/author.

Also. Creating art for yourself as the only audience is an important part of being an artist. Figuring out what you like making and then iterating on that to develop your voice is part of the learning process. Any attendee of an early art school class can see how students come in making art for themselves then learn how to consider others responses to their work.

In a medium like tumblr, where a great deal of art is made by folks with no formal education I think we have to hold space for people that are still exploring that phase. It isn't a phase you can skip without consequence.

I also think the derogatory language OP uses to describe hobbiest works of art ("a fart in the wind", "for funsies, but we all know you really wanna be famous ;p") reveals a lot about how the OP has been influenced by their own background. So often those with formal art training divide art into a hierarchy. Fine and academic art at the top, commercial and for-hire art in the middle, and hobbiest and amateur art at the bottom.

Which I find very, very funny in a discussion about the importance of considering the audience given that a large portion of tumblr artists are or started as hobbyists. Considering the audience indeed.

Tumblr’s new fixation on “FUCK AUDIENCE!!!! MAKE WHAT YOU WANT!!!” is entirely opposite my training as an artist and a rhetorician and a science communicator

Just throwing some art into the void and expecting people to interact with it is some freshman art student who thinks they know everything energy. You are taking an action with the intent of some sort of intervention in the world. Pretending your work has no directionality, biases, and contexts that influence how and by who it is understood by is just sloppy and lazy work.

You’re free to make work that’s a fart in the wind. It’s good for you! Just don’t expect it to have meaningful impact and response.