The Commodification of Art and the Decline of Consciousness

The artist does not have a romantic duty or an inherently given mission, as is often assumed. This romantic meaning attributed to the artist obscures the intellectual and conscious foundations of art. Today, many artists, gallerists, and curators know very well how to sell ideas. They either present art as a superficial cultural activity or consciously transform it into a commercial commodity. Society, in turn, often develops its understanding of what art is from within this very framework.

From this perspective, a person who does not know how to think systematically cannot truly be regarded as an artist. Today, many artists do not know what they are doing, and those who purchase their works often do not know what they are buying, establishing a relationship with the work only through its form. As a result, art is detached from content and reduced to mere appearance. People who cannot put together two meaningful sentences and who have never seriously read or written can sell works for enormous sums of money. Yet this reality does not concern artists or galleries making millions from sales. On the contrary, the current system functions precisely in this way.

Enlightenment and liberation are nothing other than conscious effort itself. Liberation is impossible for an approach that does not consciously take concepts and ideas as its purpose. Unless individuals, and consequently society, elevate their level of consciousness, unqualified artists and equally unqualified buyers create a self-enclosed structure. Over time, this structure imposes its own assumptions as if they were truth. What Metin Bobaroğlu calls ekin (culture) emerges precisely at this point. Ekin is the product of conscious production, thought, and the human process of creating oneself.

Through his or her actions and the work that is produced, the artist creates his or her own consciousness. In every act of production, the artist encompasses, transcends, reconstructs, and comes to know oneself anew. High culture emerges from this conscious and systematic process. If human beings do not live within a systematic mode of thought, they live without self-knowledge. Under such conditions, status, money, and the superficial relations built upon them hollow out both society and its values.

Moreover, this condition is not limited to the field of art. It extends into politics, economics, and every dynamic of social life. In a system where form takes precedence over content, status replaces consciousness, and the market determines the value of thought, art itself becomes alienated from its fundamental meaning.

Art is not merely visible form, a marketable object, or a cultural event. Art is a conscious act and a process of systematic thinking. The artist, in turn, is the person who constructs his or her own consciousness through that process and through action itself. In the absence of such consciousness, all that remains is form.