The seventy-sixth video of "Short Monologues by Platon Rivellis on Photography and Art" (2nd series, 2017).

Recently, there has been a significant effort by those involved in art in some way to democratize it and make it more accessible to a broader audience. The art audience is neither popular nor elitist; it consists of those who are interested and those who are not. If you are interested and treat it simply, you will approach and understand it through the joy it brings you. If you just think you want to get involved because you want to understand, then you will be grasped by interpretations that make it darker and primarily less enjoyable and pleasurable. One way for various people who are involved with it to achieve an approach to art is to provide explanations for the artwork that align with the artist's personality. If the artist has certain sexual preferences, if they have a particular religious origin or ethnic background, if they have a certain childhood, or more generally, if their psyche is expressed through photography and if their cultivated psyche leads to another or better photograph. For me personally, even the slightest correlation of the artist's personal characteristics, their life, their character, their psyche with their work is not just useless but also a bit dangerous. Because in the end, the work is interpreted and perceived as enjoyable through the journeys that the artist themselves has made in their life. Thus, I am interested in the artist's life, I am interested in the artist's psyche as merely a veneer of an already generous pleasure that I have gained from their work and not to enjoy their work because of this. I am not saying that the intention of those who engage with these approaches is bad, but it is something that impoverishes the artwork and ultimately makes it even darker. Because it shows the viewer that they need to know certain things to perceive the meaning of the artwork and enjoy it or guides the artist by telling them that if you do not cultivate and explore and utilize your uniqueness, which is your psyche, then you will not progress. The artist has a psyche, they have origins, they have a childhood, they have preferences, they have tendencies, they have distortions, they have thousands of things written in their DNA, but what makes all these things work simultaneously, together, and transform is the artwork. If we reverse the process and deconstruct it, I believe we destroy the artwork. Therefore, the effort is through subtraction, transcendence, simplicity to perceive the purity and uniqueness of the artwork that naturally incorporates the artist's psyche without it concerning us or them.