The Old World is Quaking at the Presence of the New
(Painting, “The Flood,” acrylic, ink and mixed media on canvas by Harrison Love)
The Old World is Quaking at the Presence of the New
The old guard is faltering. Major art fairs are shuttering, galleries are downsizing, and the systems that once anointed a chosen few with the mantle of cultural authority are unraveling. What was once concentrated in the hands of a few elite curators, critics, and patrons is now leaking — perhaps even gushing — into the hands of independent artists, creators, and communities long excluded from the mainstream canon.
We are witnessing the decentralization not just of technology or finance, but of taste itself.
In my opinion, the art world has long been defined by a false scarcity: a deliberate concentration of power and projection of intellect, aesthetics, and legitimacy into the purview of the few — often white, male, and well-connected — rather than the many. This scarcity ensured compliance, created mystique, and gatekept what could be seen, collected, or remembered. But now, the scaffolding is collapsing. And good riddance.
Jerry Saltz, once a truck driver, later the senior art critic at New York Magazine, has admitted to me that the authority behind what gets deemed “good art” is, in large part, arbitrary. Despite his charisma and insight, this admission reveals something we’ve all suspected: much of the contemporary art world has operated on a bluff.
And yet, what replaces that bluff could be a revolution.
(Painting “Trisophogram (1),” acrylic and ink on canvas board by Harrison Love)
The Shift to Artists as Authentic Thought Leaders
The tectonic shift we’re in now — accelerated by the rise of AI and decentralized technologies — marks a critical point of inflection. As traditional institutions falter, a new opportunity arises: for artists, particularly those who have lived on the margins, to step forward not just as image-makers but as thinkers, critics, healers, and historians.
I speak not from the sidelines but from within. I have my own gallery space — a permaculture-based model that has endured for four years. I started Amoritas, a publication that has published over twenty articles in the last year. My art practice continues to gain invitations for exhibitions, and my name carries real weight. Yet none of this has shielded me from the psychological and emotional toll exacted by obsessive harassment and criticism. I’ve suffered extensively, especially online, where boundaryless audiences too often turn into mobs.
Ironically, that hardship has become a crucible. In withdrawing from the chaos of social media and relinquishing any expectation of being understood by an audience, I’ve found clarity. My work, and the inner architecture it builds in me, has become more durable.
As an artist, author, gallerist, and critic, I see clearly that we are entering a time when artists will become the arbiters of reality and authenticity. While others scramble to adapt to rapidly evolving technologies, existential crises of work and identity, and the slow collapse of traditional institutions, artists are uniquely poised. We’ve always built our own systems. We’ve always chosen the unknown.
“I don’t make work to fit in a system. I make work to reveal the systems I can’t fit into.” — Serubiri Moses, Ugandan curator and writer
The most valuable product of art is not the object, but the process. It’s not the canvas or the exhibition, but the transformation of thought and perception required to make them. In this, we artists are not simply “creatives” or producers — we are philosophers in motion.
We archive what others overlook. We synthesize what others discard. And in an age of synthetic images and manufactured truths, the most radical act may simply be to make something real — by hand, by thought, by feeling.
(Painting — “Within the Flame,” oil on canvas by Harrison Love)
Seizing the Moment: A Call to Artists and Cultural Stewards
“When the center cannot hold, it’s the margins that know how to survive.” — Trinh T. Minh-ha, filmmaker and theorist
What we are witnessing is not the end of art, but the end of its captivity.
No longer must we wait for validation from institutions that never made space for our stories. No longer must we conform to models that reward proximity to power over proximity to truth. The top-down art world is caving in on itself, and in its place, a horizontal plane is forming — where networks of independent artists, curators, thinkers, and cultural practitioners can speak in their own voices, build new infrastructures, and define their own metrics of success.
To my fellow artists: this is the moment we were made for. Not because we predicted it — but because we have lived our entire lives in defiance of systems that demand conformity and commodification. We have developed the muscle of self-definition. We know how to transmute suffering into insight, how to endure silence and still sing. The work we do has always been of value, even when it wasn’t valued.
“We are the real archivists. We are the memory workers. The future will remember us because we are building it now.” — Sky Hopinka, Ho-Chunk artist and filmmaker
The revolution of taste, authenticity, and thought is not happening in auction houses, it’s happening in home studios, in community-run spaces, in publications like Amoritas, and in ephemeral acts of expression that algorithms can’t quite parse.
It is time for us to assert, without apology, that our value is not in our followers, sales, or institutional blessings, but in our capacity to see deeply and speak truthfully. The new cultural vanguard will not be appointed. It will rise, grounded in authenticity and guided by artists unafraid to lead with imagination.
The art world may be dissolving, but something far more vital is emerging: a world shaped by artists themselves.
Let us claim it. Let us shape it. Let us be the archive and the blueprint.
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Harrison Love is the Artist and Author of “The Hidden Way,” an award winning illustrated novel inspired by first hand research into Amazonian Myth and Folklore. He is also the founder of the permaculture gallery STOA and a contributor to the online publication AMORITAS. More about Harrison Love, his art and his writing can be found on www.harrisonlove.com
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