It's probably about time I made a post about the Hipness Purgatory aesthetic, right? I've put it off for a while because it feels like everyone already knows about it, but when I stumbled upon this post about Elementary School Figuration by @welcome.jpeg on Instagram, I knew I wanted to throw my own perspective out into the void. So, here we go.
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| @welcome.jpeg |
The hipness purgatory aesthetic is a summation of the "twee" influences on hipster culture that carried over from the '90s indie rock days into the 2000s. In reaction to the '90s attitude that sincerity was overrated, up-and-coming artists of the 2000s created work that was more whimsical and heartfelt. As Mark Greif puts it, "hipster art often kitschified—or at least made playful—the weightiest tragedies, whether personal or historical: orphans and cancer for Eggers, the Holocaust and 9/11 for Jonathan Safran Foer."
This pendulum swing from the ironic, plus the triple whammy that was the 9/11/Iraq war/2008 financial crisis combo, made people crave youthful innocence and naiveté again. The added twist of the rapid evolution of technology, going from bulky cell phones to sleek, handheld supercomputers in your pocket in, like, the blink of an eye, only caused further disillusionment (no shit, right?). Boom: that's how you get hand-drawn doodles, paper collages, and quirky colorful squiggles on your indie movie posters.
Likewise, we're currently in the midst of an era that I'm sure will be very fascinating for future students to study in their boring history classes. (I can think of, like, a dozen headlines from the past six months that would make for a crazy APUSH DBQ). The rise of AI coupled with gnarly geopolitical conflicts, plus a recession, equals a longing to return to the bliss of childhood (and an artistic emphasis on the human).
This desire is being expressed aesthetically through childlike imagery and DIY aesthetics—just like the hipsters did 20 years prior. In Elementary School Figuration, materials like colored pencils and crayons, unfinished lines, dreamlike compositions, and pastel color combinations create a playful, handmade vibe that's reminiscent of an elementary school art classroom. This shift towards the whimsical and the eclectic signals cultural anxieties about the current state of technology, politics, the economy—you get the picture.
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| @lucylevinee |
It's interesting. Both decades seem to be asking: where do the human and the role of the artist fit into a declining society that's rapidly getting taken over by technology? Only time will tell.
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by Leia Bell circa 2007
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