Art for No One

*Sources*
City:

Nazca:

Helfrecht:

Goya:
“Goya,” Hughes 2003

Prince:

“Kunst für Keinen (Art for No One): 1933-1945,” published by Hirmer, 2022

Music Used (Chronologically): Let Me Explain (Michael Vignola), A Somber View (Andres Cantu), Ear to the Ground (Hanna Lindgren), A Cold Wind (Savvun), Monster Machine (Ethan Sloan), Lemniscate (Ethan Sloan), A Massive Mist (Ethan Sloan), Vertibrae (Ryan Roth, The Beginner’s Guide), Departure (Ryan Roth, The Beginner’s Guide), D.S. AI Coda (Ryan Roth, The Beginner’s Guide), Va (Cover by Emily Hopkins, Original by Ryan Roth- The Beginner’s Guide)

Additional music and sound effects from Getty Images, Epidemic Sound and Storyblocks

Description credit: “Desert” by Patricia Hooper

[thunderheadcinema]

In college, there was an art exhibition on campus focused on the impermanence of art. One of the exhibits was a bowl of ashes titled "this painting was destroyed before the exhibition." Next to it was an oil painting titled "this painting will be destroyed if it is not taken by the end of the exhibition." I visited the exhibition every day, and nobody took the painting. On the last day, the painting was still there. I couldn't bear to see such craftsmanship destroyed, so I took it. Now it hangs in my bedroom, where only I can see it. Lately, I find myself looking at it and thinking "I'm the only one who ever sees this painting. Is this any different than if it were actually destroyed?"

Edited to actually close my quotation marks

[BuildOblivion]

from the creator of such masterpieces as 'Fear of Depths' and 'Fear of Cold' may I present the esteemed Jacob Geller's latest perfection - 'Fear of Concrete'

[spicysmooth]

Art is a form of communication. Sometimes you only want to talk to yourself.

[RTGame]

Cannot describe how excited I am for the book. You've got me thinking a lot on the preservation of media and I'm thankful to be able to keep a part of yours now no matter what happens to this site

[BrayneStatic]

After Syd Barrett left Pink Floyd, he returned to his birth name Roger Barrett and spent the rest of his life in reclusion painting. The vast majority of his work was never seen by anyone but him and maybe his close family, because he destroyed most of his paintings upon finishing them. It's an incredible contrast to the exuberant displays and mainstream visibility that Pink Floyd went on to do those same years.

[ShekharWasHere]

Sorry Jacob, but true art for noone is my 50 word docs and 4 premiere pro projects that I refuse to release because it isn't perfect yet, but refuse to work on it because I can't make it perfect yet

[syntheticat-]

I'm not to the end of the video yet, but the idea of "art for no one" evokes, for me, the reality of everyone's singleplayer Minecraft worlds. An idea implied in "for no one" is "(except the creator.)" There are probably millions of beautiful, intricate, or personally meaningful things people have created in singleplayer game files, only to never touch that world again, to lose it on a broken hard drive, or at least, never made accessible to the public. I'm not fully comfortable equating Minecraft with art, but it feels analogous.

[vikingraider]

The Nazca lines are completely viewable from nearby hills. The concept that they are only visible from the air is one made up by ancient alien conspiracies - although the effort to make them properly proportioned to a perfectly down-ward view may imply that the goal is to be viewable by the heavens/stars/gods

[chrisdunn]

There's a similar notion I've been mulling over for some time now. When I read a book, I create a movie in my mind. All the characters and locales take on a specific shape that my brain forms from the writer's words. My own unique, non-transferable version of the universe and the people in it. However, once a film or TV show is created, those people and places become fixed. Daenerys Targaryen now looks like Emilia Clarke. Aragorn will forever be Vigo Mortensen. Every film adaptation invades a little bit of my mental real estate.

[Stess-jn]

City has no scale without the person. City has no meaning without the person. City has no soul without the person. A city is a nature we made for us.

[bnsz]

One of my friends made a painting that his art teacher called the best piece he’s ever seen. My friend painted over it completely and now hangs the completely black canvas over his door. I have still never seen the original. Only my friend and the teacher have. And no one else will. I think about this more than I should.
My friend never took a picture. And has said he forgot what the original looked like.

[ashleyleckwold]

This is a great essay, but I also want you to know that I was housing a giant burrito in my face for dinner when Saturn Devouring His Son popped up and I felt weirdly called out.

[NoOne]

About the Rat King image from Plexus, I wonder if it's intended to display the violence of the action of revealing it.
It is not simply splayed along the edges. No, it was complete in the pages. The reader splays it, in an effort to reveal what is inside you splay and cut through the plexus of the art created by the artist.

[marinatut]

i've always found it interesting that the word we use for making art public is "releasing"
like a bird from it's cage, like a prisoner from their confinement we set our art free so it no longer belongs to us

[abesphere]

Probably the most damaged of Goya’s Black Paintings by institutional interpretation is the painting “Drowning Dog”. It is the most minimalist of Goya’s paintings, but very emotive, with all matter being held in the bottom-left corner the little dog is, with its eyes held up to the majority of the painting, a swath of off-white near-emptiness. Despite this, it’s held at the prized end of the “Black Paintings” hall in the Museo del Prada, with its plaque proclaiming it to be the best work of this series and definitively a drowning dog.

[swagathachristie]

Another fun thing about plexus/book publishing: pre 1900’s books used to be sold much like plexus is, with connected or uncut pages loosely bound in paper or fabric. This was so the (wealthy) purchaser of the book could arrange to have it bound properly in leather of their choosing later (likely to match their library’s collection). If one was to read a book unbound like this, they’d have to slice open each page individually with a knife.

When hearkening back to family trauma Helfrecht also may have been thinking about how her ancestors would have received and read a book like hers, down to the paper and the cutting. As someone who has cut pages that are like this, It feels solemn to do; not often to books require you to take a decisive step every single page you turn. But it also is made yours by the way you decide to shape each slice, if you trim the edges or not. You shape it, not just for yourself but for everyone who reads it after you.

[nothere]

I'm not the creative type, but I am a biologist, and many of the things you said in this video stuck with me. Despite all the technological advances the way many of us learn anatomy is still to take a razor to a corpse like you did to that book, open that which was mean to remain closed, and take the things inside out of their intended state. The concept of *in situ* - in its natural state - is a sort of holy grail for those attempting to understand our bodies, because to observe something is to change it and to be able to see how life works is in many cases to damage it. This is especially true in the case of the brain, which is simultaneously one of the most important and most fragile parts of us. Nobody has ever truly seen a plexus, just crude imitations or dead tissue. Perhaps the divine art is also for no one.

[no-one]

Okay but "Las Vegas has more in common with the Nuclear Bombs dropped nearby than the environment it was built in" is such a hard line tho? Like wtf.

[jojogape]

11 years have gone by, and yet, the concept of "Art for No One" still brings me back to 2013, when the creator one of Yume Nikki's most popular fangames at the time, LcdDem, simply vanished and told everyone not to talk about the game publicly, not to contact them, basically, to forget it existed. Same thing happens with all of their music - they deleted it off the face of the internet.
One part of me still wishes I could've told them how much LcdDem inspired me to create my own work - in fact, I might not have made my own games at all if it wasn't for LcdDem. Countless posts posing as this person have surfaced, under a veil of anonymity, indirectly claiming to be them, but it's never final. Of course, everyone has the right to anonymity. The only thing that stings is, having to feel guilty just for sharing an amazing piece of art, for mentioning it, talking about it. 11 years, and there was never any closure.
I tell myself I let go, and I wouldn't say it's a lie, but it's not completely true either. But it inevitably comes up in conversation - the way it handles colors, the atmosphere, the music, the way almost no inch of game space is wasted (except maybe the orange maze). It's at the root of why I picked RPG Maker at all, it's the first Japanese fangame I've ever played. It's the core of why I made my own fangame at all - how can I forget such beauty?

[chillhomie]

I get the feeling that the real ‘City’ was occurring while they were creating the piece. Planning, construction coordination, calling in favors for machinery, those sounds are all so common in a city. The constant development and upkeep of all the infrastructure is a major aspect. During the construction, it probably felt like a whole city working to make this art