![mystery skulls music videos explained mystery skulls music videos explained](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNWIzNGJmZDAtNzExMS00ZTY3LTlhMzEtOWFmNmY3NzkxYWNkXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzUwMTgwMw@@._V1_.jpg)
Umeboi makes a virtue of TikTok’s short videos by succinctly explaining entire art movements or challenging works. The power of art is also well explained by the TikTok art critic, Nakama Umeboi, in a lovely piece about the late US visual artist Félix González-Torres. What this confirms is the direct, intimate, confessional quality of TikTok art: it’s not some abstract concept that fascinates people, but the great love story of Abramović and Ulay.
![mystery skulls music videos explained mystery skulls music videos explained](https://freelistenonline.com/Content/artists/extralarge/72738.png)
Fans talk of its emotional power, as these people who were once close look into each other’s eyes. Searching for “performance art” led to clips of school musicals, along with a lot of fan videos about the moment when Ulay, the pioneering artist and former lover of Marina Abramović, sat down in front of her during her performance The Artist Is Present. I looked hard for what museum curators call contemporary art. I was impressed by the artistry in videos loaded by DIY fashion brand Unfinished Legacy, of Milwaukee, whose artists make raw and wild designs then screenprint them on to highly desirable T-shirts. In other words, this is an alternative art economy. Like Whitley, she uses TikTok as a platform to sell prints. She displays it in videos that starkly set Klimt-like female figures against the reality of trauma. Another painter, Kodi Delaney, says her art reflects her experience of mental illness. Like other artists on the platform, she combines displaying her work with telling us about her life. Tabitha Whitley is a Brooklyn artist who creates prints and paintings of idealised, powerful Black faces, which she shares in TikTok vignettes. But this simply reflects what’s happening in art galleries in the wake of BLM, as people use traditional methods to assert a new identity politics. You won’t find the next Steve McQueen or Tacita Dean here, uploading serious video art – or at least I haven’t – but you will encounter many enthusiasts and indefatigable outsiders.Īvant garde art is in short supply on TikTok, though. It’s not hard to imagine the late BBC children’s artist enjoying “Here’s how I paint with a mop” and “Where I find monsters for my goth art”. A rt on TikTok is more Tony Hart than Marcel Duchamp.