Elitism and Why it Sucks so Badly

    I'm not exactly sure when art stopped being produced by the majority of the "artists" in the world, but I imagine it was sometime in the twentieth century; that's when most things began to go down the tubes. These days people can pass of a pile of junk with paint haphazardly sprayed all over it for a work of art.
    There are huge communities of "artistes" all over America who spend their lives in coffee shops, artfully turning their noses up at anyone who actually shows an interest in art. These predators remain at the top of the artistic food chain because everyone else is somehow labouring under the delusion that the artistes are actually superior. Well, I've come to rectify this belief.
    I know these artistes. I've spoken with them; I've dined with them; I've even sat for hours in small coffee shops a few tables away from them, attempting to shield my mind from the vast onslaught of absolute dribble flowing from their mouths. They sit as a community of mockers, talking about how they come from "humble roots," as if that somehow affects the quality of their art, and yet mocking any and every young beginning artist who comes in their sight. I've also seen these artistes being mocked; the have no ability to be humiliated. I once presented a fantastic piece that I had done to an entire group. They stood for a moment looking at the picture, and the then the entire thing turned into an orgy of gigantic mouths, looking for any detail I might have missed; "a little less color there," "a few more strokes there," "not a fan of the subject matter." So on; forever and ever.
    These artistes, despite their extremely obvious yet somehow overlooked masquerade, are still nothing more than human. In fact, a few of them are a little bit less than human; more like half-trained dogs, willing to kill for a scrap of recognition from their masters, us.
    So what's my argument? Simply this: people must learn to make their own artistic choices, a feeling which has been put down and quashed throughout the latter part of this past century. It's the same sort of deal with any kind of critic; I don't understand why we pay these people massive amounts of money to tell us their personal opinions and then snub their noses at us if they disagree. It seems to me that we need some kind of artisticly iconoclastic superhero to light the way to a new age of enlightenment for us atists. Either that or at least we need all of these snobbish artistes to shut their whiney mouths and listen for once to what other people have to say.