I&#x27;m a geek who has in recent years dabbled with visual art, film, and a little performance art. I have a close relative who&#x27;s an artist. I&#x27;ve built artworks with artists over the last few years, one of which is currently on &#x27;tour&#x27; overseas, and I&#x27;ve built my own artwork that has been shown alongside work I&#x27;ve built with others. Hence I have first-hand experience of the contemporary art world, but very little formal training as an artist, and hence an outsider&#x27;s view of the state of things.<p>I&#x27;ve always been into art and primarily I love modern art, that is 1890s-1970s art. To avoid confusion, it makes more sense to use &quot;contemporary art&quot; to refer to art made today, which a lot of posters seem to be referring to as &quot;modern art&quot;.<p>The art I&#x27;ve made with artists has been very political, and I&#x27;ve been very happy about that. One of the films I made this year was also very political. As part of my work, I&#x27;ve been privileged to spend time in artists&#x27; studios and go to a lot of contemporary exhibition openings.<p>Coming away from this, my conclusions have been that (a) the artists I&#x27;ve been working with are exceptional, in that they <i>are</i> engaging with society, but (b) most of the art I see is made for artists, that can&#x27;t be understood or appreciated fully without a length explanation of how it relates to some previous work, or some theme in art. It rarely says something deeper or philosophical about society or our lives. For example, I may walk into a small exhibition space and find a few wooden blocks displayed on the floor. Or a piece of twine spread around a room. I ask my artist friends to explain it, and there&#x27;s no clear consensus or understanding. I think describing this as &quot;Art Becoming Irrelevant&quot; is a very kind way of putting it. I would describe it as &quot;art for artists&quot;.<p>It&#x27;s been a bugbear of mine for a while that in a world with so many pressing problems, where democracy is failing us, that artists have a huge responsibility to stand up and do something about it, rather than walking away from the mess and building more abstract installations.<p>One final point is that many posters are describing video games as &quot;art&quot;. Whilst I think video games _can_ be art, there is a very big difference between &quot;art&quot; and &quot;something that looks nice&quot; or &quot;something beautiful&quot; or &quot;something enjoyable&quot;. Art is defined by intention, amongst other things. There are great podcasts on this by Grayson Perry, which I cannot recommend highly enough:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;programmes&#x2F;b00729d9&#x2F;episodes&#x2F;downloads" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;programmes&#x2F;b00729d9&#x2F;episodes&#x2F;downloads</a><p>[edit: typo]