Charlie Stein: Life Without Art

Good art makes itself vulnerable. That’s why it’s so often the first thing to be attacked when political systems grow more conservative or begin slipping into fascism.

I write about attitude because I negotiate it daily, in painting, a medium often misunderstood as too smooth, too beautiful, too final. It challenges me to go further, to question visual habits. I use painting like a screen, something I can interact with, something that throws things back at me.

My work traces the surfaces of the present. It imagines bodies circulating through networks, emotions entangled in political systems and the inner lives of the subjects caught within them. It’s not a protest or a comment, but a way of thinking through images – part experiment, part imposition.

Lately, I often juxtapose two figures. Whether they’re holding each other or trying to strangle one another remains open. What interests me is the space between them, the third thing that emerges when two subjects collide. Niklas Luhmann didn’t define social systems as collections of individuals but as networks of communication. Relationships, for him, are not what exists between people but what is created through mutual observation and potential connection.

That’s what I try to capture: How can relationships be made visible in a world where closeness and control are increasingly digital? How do I express emotion in abstract form? How do I create images that are open and resonant?

Perhaps it all begins with courage. Because to show something means to show yourself. And good art must be vulnerable, not because it serves a function, but because it must, by definition, remain purposeless. If it serves a clear purpose, it becomes a public service announcement or propaganda.

Artistic attitude isn’t loud. Unlike political attitudes, which work through clarity and slogans, artistic attitudes are layered, subtle, often contradictory. It doesn’t shout, but it resists. Its power lies not in messaging, but in structure. Not in clarity, but in complexity.

When artistic stance is mistaken for political opinion, boundaries blur – and art risks being instrumentalized. Alongside genuine artistic conviction and overt politicization, there’s a third, perhaps most disheartening form of attitude: decorative art. Art that’s easy to consume, tailored for interiors, filtered for Instagram. Lifestyle art. No imposition, just format. No questions, only aesthetic solutions. Not attitude, just mood.

These artists often occupy spaces once reserved for difficult or provocative work. Now, those spaces host cheerful palettes and design-forward aesthetics, vaguely echoing Joan Mitchell or Keith Haring. They mimic the surface of meaningful art without feeling the need to develop an inner position.

Ask them, and they’ll speak of “beauty” and “expression,” as if reciting the less self-aware version of Romantic ideals. They’re part of what I’d call the “OnlyFans-ification” of art: it looks like art, but it never risks anything. It simply decorates – preferably capital.

Of course, attitude can also operate within capitalism. Think of Andy Warhol, whose work maintained clarity and coherence even as it embraced market logic. Consistency, hierarchy, canon. Yes, those are heavy words, but art must confront them, not ignore them.

Artists like Marianna Simnett succeed in navigating these contradictions. Her webshop, often considered taboo in the high-art world, breaks with the romantic ideal of the unsellable. And yet, her gesture reads not as self-promotion but as a subtle form of resistance – a way to survive as a woman making art in a male-dominated system. Thanks to context and content, her act is subversive, not shallow.

Still, it’s not without contradiction. Some see it as commercial opportunism, others as proof that the artistic gesture has long been absorbed by the market. Attitude always exists in context.

Félix González-Torres once addressed grief and love in “Untitled” (billboard of an empty bed) a public photo of two imprints left in pillows and sheets. Although deeply personal, it wasn’t overtly political. It was quiet, open, and emotionally expansive. The artist’s identity is present but not foregrounded. The power lies in the ambiguity. A billboard that advertises nothing – and says everything.

That ability to hold contradictions is what defines good art. For me, artistic attitude means making decisions without knowing if they’re right. Risking failure. Creating images that don’t assert the self but interrogate it, again and again. Because art that risks nothing becomes irrelevant.

Life without art might still have purpose.
But it won’t have meaning.