What's the name for when art is only about itself?

I started to write a post about the redesign of this site, and all the cool stuff it can do, but then thought better of it - I assume people can figure it out. Besides, clicking around and looking at stuff is supposed to be fun. The whole point of this enterprise is to be surfin the web.

But anyway that got me thinking, does anyone else have an extreme aversion to when art becomes self-referential? There must be a name for this phenomenon, I know for sure this cannot possibly be an original thought.

The classic example is with music. PLENTY of Rock & Roll bands have got to the point in their careers where they just have to make an album about how hard it is to be in the rock’n’roll business. I’ve also heard people say it about stand up comedy; as in, if you make it in that business, the business becomes your life, you can no longer draw from ‘real life’ to write jokes (because you don’t have one) so you mainly end up writing jokes about stuff that happened on tour.

You even get it with authors. Soooo many successful writers end up feeling the need to eventually write something about how hard it is to be a writer, how wrong all the critics are, etc.

I don’t really care for the ‘are video games art’ debate but since it’s topical to this site I will mention: The video games industry has got so big that there are now even video games about how hard it is to make video games. I haven’t played any of these but my understanding is there are simulators where you run a studio and it’s your job to make hit games or something.

It’s possible I’m the only one who is way over-sensitive to this but I can’t help seeing it everywhere. Earlier this year I was at a quilt show (first time by the way. I had NO IDEA the level of artistry going on in that world). And I’m walking around, looking at all the quilts, and because I’m so sensitive to this I said to myself at one point “You know, these people are the real deal. There is no way there could possibly be a quilt that’s about making quilts.”

WRONG. There were quilts on display who had quilting materials like sewing machines and baskets of fabric embroidered onto the quilt!

There truly must be no area of artistic expression that can’t become self-referential.