Art Was Never Meant to Be Pretty

Art was never meant to match the wallpaper.

It was meant to scream when we couldn’t. To throw color like fists. To bleed truth, not to soothe a gallery.

Yet somehow, we began sanitizing it. We made art an accessory — something to “go with the room” rather than something that disrupts the room. We began expecting artists to entertain rather than evoke. To beautify trauma, rather than expose it.

But real art — the kind that lingers in your chest like grief, the kind that makes you shift in your chair, the kind that forces you to see — it’s rarely pretty.
It’s messy. Rude. Honest. Ugly, even. It spills. It forgets grammar. It interrupts you when you’re trying to scroll past.

The truth is, art was never supposed to sit still. It was always supposed to move us. To reflect us. To challenge what we think we know.

So when you see a painting that unsettles you, a poem that reads like a confession, a dance that doesn’t smile — don’t look away.

That’s the point.