Cursed aesthetics
Italian living leading artist Maurizio Cattelan
I have had an Instagram account since its rise, when the images had to be taken directly from the phone camera. What a limit would that be to our creativity and to the application itself.
I have been using Tumblr for no less than 10 years, as this blog testifies. Reposting (sharing) is the daily bread for millions of people today.
I have been dealing with images, as an artist, for decades. Over the years I have created various surreal situations and visual nonsense summarized in single and definitive shots, as the fashion of our times wants. So, I am not new to what I’m about to describe.
Both Instagram and Tumblr have seen the rise of a type of images that are as curious as they are annoying; so upsetting (or "cursed", as they have been defined) that we want to see more of it, in a loop.
Food and fashion above all: the subjects within this genere are very repetitive.
The definition "cursed image" was born in 2015 from a Tumblr blog that bore this name. Since then we have seen the “curatorial” flourishing of the phenomenon also on other platforms. The cursed images are those found at the bottom of the Internet barrel, in the most disparate searches, often grainy and scanned leftovers from the 1990s, at the dawn of the Internet. Funny and disgusting images, taken with or without awareness; jokes, memes, stolen family photos or college parties gone wrong.
"From the trash bin of the Net"
Valentina Tanni (art historian, curator and lecturer) deals with the “meme” phenomenon at an academic level. In her book Memestetica, highlights the pioneering role of the artist, revealing - so to speak - that numerous challenges or flash mobs, as well as other grotesque images online today, have actually been anticipated by a few decades by the conceptual Situationism movement. Actions and gestures that could not be understood by the mass back then and which today are much more comprehensible. The bad taste in art (the "tacky") and the reason why it is loved to the point of being appreciated and collected has been widely investigated during the last century.
Image taken from Valentina Tanni's website: not a conscious artwork, but the result of a motorist refusing to pay the fine. Images like this can go viral and even inspire Instagram content-creators
Today, in the general basket of the so-called cursed images, among the casual and low quality creations, there are plenty of high-creative contents, made by professional with awareness of the phenomenon. This shouldn’t surprise: Internet inspires artists as much as the leading artists inspire the Internet users. Those professionals “cursed creators” are well-trained, talented studio photographers and photo editors. Their production level is comparable to that of the glossy fashion and beauty magazines, with similar subjects too: fashion, food and beauty. Lots of spaghetti, pizza, sausages, lots of beans, lots of dentures, stilettos and women's accessories. This field is becoming the hobbyist territory for graphic designers and art directors. Cursed image creators look to fashion no less than the fashion industry looks to cursed images, to add contemporaneity and provocation to their advertising and collections.
Spaghetti galore
I watched this trend grow and realised that even in his collateral work as an imaginary creator, Maurizio Cattelan was right; he wasn't just a fool, an art prankster, miming and sneaking from the Net. Catttelan (certainly not alone) was launching the era of provocative nonsense: pulp, post-situationist, neo-dadaist. In other words, he was anticipating the many creators racing into this expressive niche right now. And we know that he, the most famous Italian contemporary artist, does not develop something from nothing, but from the existing.
"If some creative becomes viral, doesn't mean that it is art; means that became viral"
In order to dig into this subject by the words of an insider, I decided to hear Francesco Palermo (aka Das Palermo), a “Cursed images” lover, as well as a creator of themed images who would do better to explain to us firsthand.
Vlady: Hi Francesco. I know you as a collector of bizarre images on Instagram (@Defecationism) and as an "independent" creator of similar images. Why "defecationism" in the first place? Is it the fear of properly defining your work? Do you agree with the "cursed images" label for what you do and what you virtually collect?
An example on how can a fashion brand be influenced by an Instagram content creator, such as Gab Bois, a Canadian "cursed image artist"
Das Palermo: Hi Vlady. Yes, I have a dual role as both creator and collector of cursed images. I started collecting them many years ago, mainly to get inspiration and to try not to conceive an idea that maybe someone else had had. Over time I realised that I had no more space on my mobile phone, but I didn't want to delete them because it is a nice collection, so I decided to make them public with the Instagram page @defecationism. A friend of mine coined the term. “Cursed images” was too generic and not very "artistic" so we gave it a name as if it was an artistic movement. There is also a Manifesto. I like to think that it is an avant-garde, even if perhaps the avant-gardes belong to the past by now.
Thanks to DEFECATIONISM I can say that my art has a meaning, it belongs to something artistic, even if I had to create the meaning myself.
Vlady: So, you are inspired by the imagery of “cursed images”, those photos - disturbing as well as captivating - that became viral on the net. Do you agree on what was said?
Funny, but "artist" unknown, of course
Das Palermo: I did art studies and I was not good compared to the others. Art schools are good for painters and sculptors and nothing more. I had something inside, I spent many years trying to understand what it was until thanks to Instagram I saw that the cursed images had a following, they made me understand that "it can be done". You can unhinge artistic beliefs if you have a minimum of creativity. My life has changed, I am happy with what I do and I do not care about the judgment of others, whether it is positive or negative. I just want to create. There are artists who will never find their true path.
Vlady: Do you think cursed images have a wide influence on artists from various fields?
Das Palermo: Many take inspiration from cursed images but try to give it a higher sense, and that's what I try to do, even if I don't like professionalism in shooting. We are all cursed image artists.
Pizza, such an original topic within the genre
Fortunately I am a person persecuted by this kind of photos, I constantly have ideas and I have to write them because otherwise I forget them....
Vlady: Are we all cursed image artists? Would you explain this better?
Das Palermo: We all are, cursed images are everywhere but we don't notice it. I will never forget my first photo. I had been thinking about it for months but I didn't have the courage because we are linked to preconceptions that society forces us to follow. When I published it, two people commented on it. 1) Are you stupid? 2) Do you also do smart things during the day? I had crossed the threshold, I was delighted. The photo went viral in Italy. I no longer reflect on art, on what it is, on what it represents for me or for others, in fact I never say that I am an artist, it embarrasses me a lot and maybe I am not. People enjoy what I do and that's enough for me.
Vlady: If art today is expression and communication, what exactly do you intend to communicate?
Tagging his own pictures - you never know, it could get viral
Das Palermo: I don't know what I want to communicate; I don't think I have a message to give. I only follow what my brain suggests to me but I would just like to make those who look at my photos smile. No explanations, no bad messages or something to make you think. A photo, an idea, something silly. I'm tired of seeing the melancholy, the “introspectivism”; artists giving themselves a tone. I would like to destroy the figure of the artist and eliminate the distance between the creator and the observer.
Vlady: Any artist on this field that you would like to mention for his/her good job?
Das Palermo: An artist who inspired me a lot is Gab Bois. I respect her because she was one of the first to propose this genre. I think that now, like many others, she has jumped out from her artistic comfort zone. I hope it never happens to me; I’ll always want to cross the line and I'm ready to make mistakes. I can do this since I'm not famous.
In this instagrammable form of art, little to no importance has the "truth". Photoshop is king, just like in advertisement (Artwork by Gab Bois)
The interview should have stopped here and I was supposed to get the "best" images of Das Palermo directly from him. But, everything went wrong. After the interview I continued chatting with Palermo, and I discovered a very insecure person who confused my advices and tips (required by him and totally part of the conversation) for judgments. I tried to cheer him up in every way, talking about myself, about my failures and how difficult or vying the first steps were. He didn't help. Palermo has cut off all relations, stopped responding to messages, did not answer the phone, blocked me on social media. My experience is that artists who refuse to talk about art do not do so out of discretion or communication policy; they do it to reduce the number of bullshit. They do it out of fear, because they don't master the subject. This is the case of Palermo; a fellow who refuses to call himself an artist (and does well) but who would like to become one and here is all the hypocrisy. One who masquerades as an anti-system, questioning art and the art world, not even was Duchamp. A person who boasts of artistic studies but who hasn't done any. One who knows nothing about art and who offers modest explanations or - even worse - feigned modest, inflating his own size. One who, if things go wrong, is the fault of others, of the gallery owners who do not understand, of Cattelan who does not open the door.
Cattelan has produced several "Instagram friendly" pieces of art, decades before this social media ruled
Das Palermo is an Instagram victim. I would have liked to help him; I care about the subject and of people overestimating its importance, to the extend of getting sick because of it. And what if Instagram goes down?
I would have liked to know even more, right because not everything that is creative is art. Advertising is an example. Likewise, it's not because something creative goes viral, means that is art. Oh no. That equals to popular, nice, funny... in a word: viral. End of the story.
My aim was to understand if there is an artist behind these "highly viral" Instagram content. The answer is rather negative. However, I do not judge the production, but the thickness of the grey matter behind. For me this is not an art approach. For me neither is Gab Bois, an artist... despite her 600k followers. Quantity is not quality. Not art quality, at least. The best artists I know aren't even on Instagram. Some even don't even have a website. Their presence on the net is not in the first person, yet their name is on top of everything.
Balenciaga digs deep into this internet niche
To his defence, Palermo defines this genre as shit, literally (defecazione). Hypocrisy and feigned modesty, again. If you define something as shit, why do you expect others not to rate it as such. it's like walking around screaming that you are an idiot, until someone comforts you by telling you that you are anything but. That's a bit pathetic.
In conclusion, "against single thinking" is the most conspiracy theory friendly slogan ever seen on Instagram. Don't worry Mr Palermo, you are right. We are single minded people, thinking like artists, while you of Defecationism are not, you are over and beyond, from the top of your studies and awards.
