Chrononormativity: or how many wrongs make a right?

Hello, darlings. Happy New Year! Despite the rocky start, may 2026 bring you every relief you desire from the dumpster fire of 2025. Good riddance! It's at moments like these that I turn to the uplifting work of Aaron Reynolds, aka Effin' Birds.

The turning of the year always leads me into a contemplation of the passage of time. And by passage of time I’m really talking about aging. I’m reminded of a recent article from the art magazine Hyperallergic: “When Artists are too Old to be Emerging”.

Davis astutely points out how the support structures of the art world, despite their protestations to the contrary, love the bright young thing—particularly when brought to you by the letters M, F, and A and their six-figure price tags. But, what happens when youth fades and the vicissitudes of life add up? Kids to support, aging parent to help, hoping to buy a house, saving for retirement, watching your health decline precipitously and unpredictably, finding, keeping and surviving day jobs?

What about timelines that don’t follow the art establishment’s happy path? What about those of use starting late? Those that might have deferred the dream to survive the capitalist hellscape? Those whose every day is a dream deferred? Who eek out precious moments at the easel or the drawing table, fought for bitterly against tides of despair and disparagement, from inner and outer pressures? The support structures for artists in the US are not only centered on, but praise and propagate, preconceived normative notions that reward a narrow path of conformity. Meanwhile, they cast the rest of us aside. If you’re the wrong age, wrong skin color, wrong parents, wrong bank account balance, working in the wrong style, painting the wrong subjects, you’re invisible. With so many wrongs, so many exclusions and biases, who’s actually left standing, who’s “right”? Tokenism and the art establishment’s fondness for trauma porn can shift these restrictions temporarily and unpredictably. But largely, things continue in the same self-perpetuating manner. Davis does point out some programs and institutions that are trying to buck the trend. Signs of progress that are to be praised and emulated. But it doesn’t seem like any kind of sea change on the horizon.

It’s interesting that a few months later, they also publish another aging-related article: "Art Problems: Am I Too Old to Fit In?". It’s of the “mindset” variety of advice that makes my blood boil. Just go get ‘em, tiger. Show them how fabulous you really are and they’re sure to come around. You’re good enough, strong enough, and gosh darn it, people like you! This installment of an advice column is decidedly light on mention or critique of the ageist art establishment. It puts the burden squarely on the shoulders of the aging artist themself.

“But belonging isn’t about eliminating all the objections others might have about who you are. Rather, it’s accurately assessing what you bring to the table, so those objections don’t matter. “

“Don’t matter” can mean a variety of things. Certainly, a strong sense of self and your intrinsic worth can shield you from the soul-killing harm of taking these thing personally. But, moving back a step for the sake of a larger perspective, it’s worth a long, hard look at the forces driven by larger cultural and political realities that we have to navigate. And maybe try to change?

Cultivating genuine personal relationships and a steely determination are essential and praiseworthy. But we need to consider the distance between necessary and sufficient. Individual solutions to systemic issues will not get you very far. And to offer only individualistic advice absent a larger systemic context could be seen as a disservice to their readers. It narrows the focus to fitting in, as the title suggests, instead of creating or finding alternate support structures. All the energy spent trying to mold yourself into an acceptable but ultimately fake simulacrum of success could be put to better uses: contribute to or organize a collective, find alternative spaces to mount your own show, repurpose the lost and abandoned into work of artistic protest. Artists by nature create, so why not create something meaningful in the world rather than give yourself an assimilationist glow up?

As an aside, I’d also like to point out that this questionable approach to professional development advice is quite endemic to the art world. It draws heavily of new age philosophies on manifesting. Just think hard enough about what you want and it will happen. The focus in on your “mindset” as the primary agent of change, not the actual, messy, uncontrollable world around you. It’s individualism taken to an absurd level. It’s magical thinking.

So, where does that leave us, darling? What to do? Besides getting salty and mixing another cocktail, of course. Well, here a few things I have cooking as we head into a new year:

• Continued self-publishing of bawdy comics
• Organizing to promote libraries and getting the work of artists out into the world. Stay tuned for fun gathering in the NYC area related to the leftist glory of the humble public library
• Crowd funding outside the major platforms. Platforms like Patreon and Kickstarter always carry risks for work like mine that’s at the intersection of queer and erotic. They can boot you, steal your money, or shadow ban you faster than the eye blinks. Stay tuned for your chance at some original art for way less cash than you think!
• Lending art on a semi-permanent basis to anybody that is prepared to care for it. The art world is way too focused on selling as the only way to collect art. We can create alternatives, darlings.

Cover photo by Yaniv Knobel via Unsplash.