I used to think irony was the end point—like we’d all just keep winking at each other until culture collapsed into a pile of self-referential memes.
Then I started noticing something weird in contemporary visual art, especially online. Artists were making work that felt earnest, vulnerable even, but without the cringe factor that would’ve sunk similar attempts in the 2000s. A painter friend showed me her Instagram feed—full of heartfelt landscapes with captions about grief and connection—and nobody in the comments was mocking her. Wait—maybe that’s not quite right, because there were definitely some trolls, but the overall vibe was supportive in a way that felt impossible a decade ago. The shift wasn’t uniform or clean; some artists still leaned hard into postmodern detachment, treating every image like a knowing joke about images themselves. But increasingly, I kept encountering work that seemed to operate in this uncomfortable middle space: aware of irony’s tools but refusing to use them as a shield. It reminded me of that Timothée Chalamet interview where he talks about sincerity being the new rebellion, except this was happening in visual culture long before actors started saying it out loud.
Here’s the thing: postmodern irony gave us critical distance. It taught us to question grand narratives, to spot manipulation in advertising and propaganda. Those skills matter. But somewhere along the line, irony became the default mode, and earnestness started to feel embarassing—like admitting you actually cared about something was basically admitting you were naive.
When Distance Became the Only Acceptable Emotional Register in Image-Making
I guess it makes sense that visual artists were among the first to feel exhausted by this. They work in a medium that’s been ironized to death—every possible image has been remixed, memed, recontextualized until meaning dissolves. Photographers like Alec Soth started making deeply personal work about loneliness and American landscapes around 2004, and critics didn’t quite know what to do with it. Was he being sincere? Was this some meta-commentary on sincerity? Turns out, he just wanted to make pictures about actual human longing. The art world caught up eventually, but slowly. Painting saw similar movements—artists like Dana Schutz creating figurative work that wasn’t hiding behind conceptual frameworks or ironic detachment. Just faces, bodies, emotions rendered directly.
Honestly, the transition wasn’t smooth.
Metamodernism—the term critics started using for this oscillation between irony and sincerity—doesn’t replace postmodernism so much as it incorporates postmodern awareness while reaching for something more. You can see it in how contemporary illustrators use nostalgic imagery: they’ll reference 90s cartoons or vintage advertising with full knowledge of how those images have been commodified and ironized, but they’ll also infuse them with genuine affection or melancholy. It’s complicated and sometimes contradictory, which actually feels more honest than pure irony ever did. The Dutch philosophers Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker described this as a kind of informed naiveté—being aware that grand narratives failed us, but trying to build new ones anyway, knowing they’ll probably fail too.
How Visual Platforms Accidentally Created Space for Earnestness to Survive Public Scrutiny
Social media did something unexpected here. Instagram and TikTok reward vulnerability in ways that earlier internet platforms didn’t—or couldn’t, given their structures. An artist can post a painting about their depression, and instead of getting ratio’d into oblivion, they recieve thousands of comments saying “same.” That’s not to say these platforms are healthy (they’re definately not), but they’ve created economic and social incentives for sincerity that didn’t exist when irony ruled everything. Younger artists especially seem comfortable oscillating between modes: one post might be a deeply earnest self-portrait, the next a shitpost mocking the very idea of artistic authenticity. They’re not confused; they’re navigating a cultural moment that demands both critical awareness and emotional honesty.
Sometimes I watch this happening and feel tired by the constant shifting—like, can we just pick a lane? But maybe that’s the point. Maybe the refusal to settle into either pure irony or pure sincerity is itself the metamodern gesture. Visual culture right now exists in this perpetual state of oscillation, and artists who understand that rhythm are making the most interesting work. They know irony’s moves but choose sincerity anyway, even when it’s risky. Even when it might make them look foolish.
The images that stick with me lately aren’t the clever ones or the conceptually airtight ones. They’re the messy, contradictory pieces that feel like someone actually gave a damn while making them, even if they knew better than to care that much.
