Arnold Schoenberg reportedly said:
If it is art it is not for all, and if it is for all it is not art.
This comment seems to call into question Karl Ove Knausgård’s link between challenging art and Protestantism, not because Schoenberg doesn’t agree that art is difficult but because Schoenberg clearly didn’t link art to Protestantism. Whether Schoenberg’s description of music, Calvino’s of literature, or Knausgård’s of photography, the idea that art is restricted to the enlightened few, the properly educated, the cultured, those with the luxury of time and money to appreciate it, explains why I don’t consider myself an artist.
I create meaningless things, sometimes those are photographs, sometimes magazines, sometimes books. I create things I want to see in the world. Those things might be sufficiently layered to invite different interpretation, or not. It doesn’t matter. If nobody likes them. That’s ok. If everybody likes them. That’s ok too. It’s not like I’m trying to make art.