Opinion | Art Isn’t Supposed to Make You Comfortable

For all its good intentions, art that tries to minister to its audience by showcasing moral aspirants and paragons or the abject victims of political oppression produces smug, tiresome works that are failures both as art and as agitprop. Artists and critics—their laurel bearers—should take heed.

2.6.3 True artists produce works that are novel, complex, and ambiguous.

2.6.4 Novel, complex, and ambiguous artworks can always be simplified to make conventional art forms more stimulating for mainstream audiences.

Here we see a really pivotal moment of change, when art must become something that does not make people uncomfortable, so that they will spend money. The kind of person who is expected to consume art is transformed in the mind of the producer. The people who might very possibly love being expanded by what they see are never given the chance. They'

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