Dystopian Art: Can It Serve As A Form of Cathartic Relief?

Despite aesthetic beauty and cultural value, art has always fulfilled the role of our society’s mirror, reflecting both its charms and frailties. Though this mirror may at times be warped or simply broken, it nonetheless enables an artistic medium for individuals to channel a wide array of perspectives about our present future.  

A growing number of artists are pondering into the world of the unknown with fear, as many are concerned about our collective decay and the possibility of a societal collapse. As we have all become increasingly hooked on envisaging the unpredictability and chaos of our future, it comes as no surprise that dystopian art recently underwent a massive surge in popularity.

The concept of dystopia is characterized by an oppressive social order that breeds fear, mayhem, poverty, and inequality. Though dystopian artists have been around for centuries, the sudden increase in dystopian art - and our consequent obsession with it - can partially be attributed to the escalation of social pessimism. Although the global living standards are on an upward trajectory, we nonetheless remain unsatisfied by our progress. The media further perpetuates mindset by primarily hyper fixating on the wide array of ongoing humanitarian crises, engendering unequal coverage for our collective achievements. 

Indeed, the implicit theory that the obstacles afflicting our society are more potent than the solutions we can offer to resolve them has attained a remarkable level of allure in the art world. Hence, today, artists aim to not only visualize the current issues, but also the future ramifcations that foreshadow them. And with the sharp improvements in the realm of graphic design, dystopia has only become easier to conceptualize.

We are constantly confronted with an abundance of questions regarding the obstacles that lie ahead. Will our communities be run by robots upholding totalitarian, discriminatory regimes? Will our planet become no longer recognizable as a result of our own mismanagement of natural resources? Dystopian art thus fascinates us as it echoes our slow, yet likely gravitation towards a dystopian society ourselves, while also providing a form of cathartic relief.  

For instance, American artist Scott Litsfield has become an extremely popular figure in the realm of dystopian art for his paintings of a lone astronaut, who guides us through varying sci-fi landscapes fraught with pop culture references.

His work is his own introspection into the future state of the world in respect to the peculiar reality we are living in; it symbolizes how different the world is today than we could have ever imagined it, and how it will only become more unrecognizable in the years to come.

THAT DIVIDE, BETWEEN THE FUTURE I THOUGHT WE’D GET, AND THE STRANGE ONE WE’RE LIVING IN, IS WHAT INSPIRES MY WORK

- SCOTT LITSFIELD

Indeed, a prevailing theme in dystopian art is societal collapse, which various artists frequently attributed to global warming. With innumerable species falling into extinction due to our unsustainable exploitation of earth’s resources, we are confronted with a very dark, apocalyptic future.

American illustrator and painter Alice Ty quickly obtained fame for her rather grim, but remarkably convincing perceptions of the future US landscapes that exhibit drought, extinction and other natural catastrophes. The visual beauty of her work directly juxtaposes their daunting meaning; Ty has successfully connected scientific-research into beguiling artistic works that viscerally relate us to this impending global issue.

Furthermore, technological apocalypse has also become a recurring trend in this art field. Unlike in the depictions of human-induced societal collapse, here, technology serves as the foremost driver of trepidation. Our technophobia is directly manifested through our nostalgia for the simpler, easier times, when machines were not dominating every corner of our lives; indeed, it is in our human nature to be disillusioned by the ‘grass being greener on the other side’ phenomenon as we collectively pine for the more predictable,  trouble-free era.

 In fact, our dependence on technology is growing at exponential speeds, creating an ideological conflict between our desire to move towards a more advanced society and our simultaneous fear of an unbridled technological dictatorship. For instance, many artists exhibit a common dismay of the Metaverse, which can entail reduced data sovereignty, lack of privacy, substantial cybercrime and, most importantly, a self-sufficient society run exclusively by machines.

As computers have attained remarkable speed and intelligence, it appears as though our own human race has almost become replaceable. 

It is pivotal to note that the line between dystopia and utopia is relatively blurred, as one can easily transverse into the other. Some utopian artists share an idealistic view of the future, upholding that technology is merely a bridge between our present society and a more modern, prosperous one. 

For instance, recall the artistic portrayal of nuclear weapon development during the Cold war. Many artists expressed the popular view that nuclear weapons are a tool of inevitable self-destruction, while others expressed its aptness to insinuate world peace. The Cold War ended approximately 30 years ago, and today we have unique insight on the issue: nuclear weapons in fact did not establish global unity, but rather the opposite. The threat of human extinction at the hands of nuclear weapons still looms on the horizon. 

As viewers, we receive earnest gratification from chaos,  much more than we do from a place of bliss. Thus, the common inclination of artists to herald towards formidable matters, rather than recapitulate the comfort of our present, has reaffirmed dystopia as a more popular art form.

Our obsession with dystopian art may come from our simultaneous fear and enticement by what our future can hold, which can invigorate our desire to act upon the issues at hand. On this premise, dystopian art is even arguably much more comforting than utopian art, as it  prepares us to confront the harsh reality of things rather than put us at ease by the unlikely idea of a perfectly functional society. Dystopian art gives us the freedom to view the world as we wish to, allowing us to determine whether we are doomed with the inevitability of mayhem or blessed with the necessary awareness that can help us prevent it. 

Art is incapable of mitigating the problems of our present. Yet the insight we obtain from it can equip us with the ability to resolve these calamities down the line.