Founders' Blog: Why start an art mag?
When Ben Franklin published his Join or Die cartoon it catalyzed 13 misbehaving colonies into union. When Banksy decided to portray incoming refugees as cast members from Les Mis he pulled at our heartstrings and forced a conversation Europe didn't want to have. When Andy Warhol drew that can of soup he made it clear that art is for everyone and not just the intelligentsia. Art changes the way people look at life and the world they live in and we want to be part of that change.
Starting this magazine isn't the easiest thing in the world. Trying to find writers, interviewing artists, getting a headache designing a website, and recording podcasts (coming soon!) are all challenges that while fun, also take time. What started as a hobby is becoming a more and more costly obsession. I'm enjoying it but as time and money spent build up, I feel like it's time to articulate my (and my partner's) vision for this magazine.
There are very few, if any, magazines that explicitly try to bridge the gap between art and the wider public. Art is so much a part of the human experience, it's odd that people are not more familiar with it. People are not comfortable looking at a painting, a sculpture or just some graffiti and thinking about how it enriches their life or what story it's trying to tell.
If you're a victim of STEM centred education, then it's hard to see the value. But as soon as people had charcoal, they were probably drawing shit on walls. It's in us. When artificial intelligence takes its great leap forward and takes over the jobs that consist of data analysis and algorithmic thinking, there will be precious little left that we'll be better at doing. We'll be confronted with the question: what makes us human?
I would argue that it's the ability to create. The ability to think of something from nothing, with almost no background data, and to concretize that thought into something tangible is uniquely human. Monkeys can use tools, but they wont ever write 'Lock Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels' (make no mistake, that is art). Machines can solve impossible scientific and mathematical problems. They'll never paint a can of soup. Art, inspired by what some would say is a divine spark, changes hearts, minds, and sometimes whole cultures. Not all we create is art but the best creations are always artistic.
We want to be creators. We want to help creators. We want to change the way people see art and, of course, we want to build something artistic.
Build it with us.