Wouldn’t it be interesting to know if some of the world famous artists like Pablo Picasso, Egon Schiele, Wassily Kandinsky or Piet Mondrian got the same recognition in these modern times? Imagine Pablo Picasso had to spend at least 50% of his available time to promote his artworks on social media platforms and online pages, just to hope that his work would be discovered by buyers, curators and/or galleries. And Egon Schiele would be getting so pissed off by the fact that his work got banned everywhere, because it was against the social media guidelines to share nudes and strong graphic content.
In the blink of a virtual eye
Art Is accepted and fully treated as a product that needs to generate money in the hyper capitalistic system we are living in. Surviving as artist means you have to transform yourself into a commercial business in which there is almost no place for free thinkers, experimental drift, stubborn personalities and original ideas. The Kandinsky’s and Mondrian’s, with their unique and complex perspectives on art and life, would find themselves be completely overruled these days and would found themselves as a lone voice crying in the wilderness. With the extremely fast exchange of online information, their ideas would disappear in the blink of a virtual eye.
Being visible in a nutshell
There are so many articles that show you how to become an artist that it resulted into a shallow and uninspiring creative landscape. Media and tech companies decide what will be accepted and what society consumes. Content and originality doesn’t matter as long as things can be transformed into money and/or crypto currency. You can easily fill 1000’s of museums each year with the massive amounts of daily uploaded abstract paintings. How many comments would Willem de Kooning receive on his latest uploaded painting? How many likes and emoticons would Jackson Pollock get if he showed his last work on Instagram? Imagine both prefer to focus on their art and skills instead of using social media, nobody would care about their paintings, right?
Remaining visible in this digital age is perhaps one of the most frustrating parts of modern life. We have to share and trust our information to online platforms which are run by companies with bad intentions. The advice (which you can find over the entire internet), is to share your art on every available platform, making it as visible as possible. This will work against you in the future. I’ll going deeper into this subject in another blog.
