Some Pop Culture Ramblings

All artists are or should be students of pop culture. The reason being is that art does not happen in vaccum, and our creations mirror the experiences and teachings that we have absorbed and our reaction to those teaching and experiences. The reason why pop culture is so important is because it is the now of the now, and represents, sometimes at a stretch, the most current influences that exist over the broadest part of a culture. It is the fuel of any artist or at least the product of one artist's contemporaries that are viewed by the widest possible audience.

You may hear folks say that art does not need to mean anything, that it can just exist. I say that's utter bunk; artists do not spend huge amounts of time on things that lack meaning (at least to the artist). Some artists claim that they create work for no-one but themsevles, but as soon as they show their work, it has an audience. Artists need to take responsibility to understand their audiences and should carefully meditate upon this as they mold thier works. That being said, most artists are able to do that unconciously as they create. After all, art is also a process that taps heavily into one's subconciuos, so when an artist is not actively trying to create a specific message, then that actually increases the chances that messages and meanings buried in the artist's psyche by thier specific culture will show up in the work they create.