From the author: Art, alcohol, and other ways to expand consciousnessWhat are you drinking...... All art is the art of escaping. The faster you run, the more brilliant you are. The magical ability to take us away from boring reality, inherent in real art, makes it similar to alcohol. Many people think that these are one and the same thing... THE ART OF BEING AWAY The ancients believed that the task of art was to depict reality, convince us of the virtues of goodness, and encourage us to live an honest life. The ancient sages did not yet know what mass agitation and propaganda were. In fact, early art was mass propaganda. The artist depicted God and religious subjects in order to glorify the triumph of faith, convince us of its immutable truth, and persuade us to submit. The court portrait painter created not a portrait, but an image of royal grandeur. The image is not of a king or an earthly prince, but of a supreme being, called by the will of heaven and his very essence to rule over us forever. The reflection of reality as a hierarchy, pleasing to heaven and established by it, has been the central storyline of art for centuries. Vertical of power among people, order and harmony in nature. The higher the status of the depicted creature, the more beautiful and harmonious it appears on the canvases of classical painters. Every rebellion and overthrow of order is the destruction of beauty and a fall into sin. Over the past thousands of years, people have grown up and learned to distinguish between clever brainwashing and real art. Although this knowledge still remains a secret for millions of our compatriots. So in the expanses of the fatherland scorched by socialist realism, people continue to believe that art should depict reality. And the more accessible and bright it is, the more beautiful it is for everyone. That's why they drink so much... THE ART OF DRAWING A HORSE An ancient philosopher described with admiration the artist's ability to depict a horse in such a way that the viewer could not distinguish it from a living one. This doesn't excite us. Our world is full of images. Today the number of painted horses exceeds all herds in the world. If you count every photograph, every drawing and every single frame. We have nowhere to hide from the round-the-clock trampling of hooves. The skillful hands of thousands of artists copied everything that surrounded them, leaving nothing that was not repeated many times. Then machines took over the image function. And the world plunged into a play of shadows. Images of objects that once inspired delight and testified to the power of the human spirit and the precision of the author's hand have become a burden. An annoying repetition of the surrounding vulgarity. Reflections of reality, accurate, bright and full of authenticity, do not leave our brain for a moment. They pour out from millions of advertising posters, attack from television screens, and overtake on the Internet. The world oozes images, oozes images, like a lemon caught in a juicer. And its magic drops, so desired at first, turned into poison. Images are slowly killing us. We don't need images anymore. We have not been happy with their authenticity for a long time. We are oppressed by their monotony, and we demand that they be removed as far as possible. Standard houses, conveyor machines, and neat people. I want to run away, get drunk and forget myself... THE ART OF FORGING YOURSELF Many people do this. While geniuses create a new reality, freed from the slavish need to follow life, others do this through psychoactive substances. Starting with the simplest. There is a clear correlation between the development of fine arts and the level of alcohol consumption. The more realistic images surround people, the more they drink. Just to escape from life. Life follows on your heels, stalks and sneaks, watching for the moment when you forget and weaken. And he will mercilessly sink his claws into you when you decide that you have become completely happy. When the ancient Greeks realized this, they created the art of drama. The irreducible tragedy of existence, contained in the heart of reality like seeds in the pulp of a fruit. Joy gives birth to suffering, and that is life. Hence the eternal.…