Written by: Kamy Smelser
Article Ideation by: Ryan Draybuck
Illustrations by: Katelyn McManis
Photography by: Mikaela Helane
Designed by: Joy Padua
The first time John Bohlin, a Columbia fine art graduate student, came to Chicago, he was enthralled by a virtual reality art exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The exhibit only required you to sit and put on a pair of headphones to experience another reality.
“The work itself didn’t exist physically, only its mode of presentation,” he says. “And now we don’t even need a headset to experience augmented realities, just a phone, just a screen really.”
Artists were once completely reliant on hoping a gallery would pick up their art for it to be shared with any audience. This has shifted with the obvious rise in social media consumption. While this provides an easy way to share art with a broader audience, this leaves artists with the question of how innovative or admired their art can be as it will primarily be seen through the quick consumption on a smartphone screen.
“Art consumption has seen a massive and comprehensive shift from white-walled gallery spaces to a much more democratic online presentation mode.”
— JOhn BOhlin
Bohlin, being from rural Kentucky, gives credit to Instagram, saying it was his introduction to the art of photography. Outside of his elementary style art classes, any kind of media besides painting or drawing didn’t exist.
“I probably never would have been an artist without seeing those things either, just because I wouldn’t have known it was possible,” Bohlin says.
The Downsides...
The shortening of attention-spans poses a rather scary threat to whether these artists will truly receive the admiration they deserve through primarily showcasing work online. Gregory Foster-Rice, a Columbia associate photography professor, sees this as one of the bigger and more concerning issues and has worked to keep a healthy balance when viewing art online versus in-person.
"The internet is so vast that we (including myself,) feel compelled to move swiftly through cyberspace," says Foster-Rice "There’s such an onslaught of imagery and ideas, it can be hard to slow down."
For artists, this means creating attention-grabbing work is key. Bohlin says that this challenges artists to keep a balance between making work that is close enough to current trends to be relevant right now, but far enough away from those trends that it can stand on its own once that trend moves into something new.
Creating work that can still be digested and dissected as it would be in a gallery is the goal when publishing work online.
"It’s also dispiriting to see physical and oftentimes very visceral or tactile art experiences reduced to small image squares that get a second of interest before being swiped away to the next new image," Foster-Rice says.
The positive side of things...
Though, this transition for artists is not such a bad or scary thing. There are obvious advantages like having a broader reach, cleaner presentations, free promotions and deeper connections with an audience. With the vast presence art can have online, this also opens it up to new audiences that might have not had the chance to view it in an art gallery.
"[It's] good for the visibility of art and increasing the diversity of its audience," Foster-Rice says. "We are now seeing art reaching into and being recognized in more communities and more spaces than ever before."
Through social media, there is a growing diversity in who art is reaching and being shared by, which provides a great platform for a relationship between art and social justice movements. As the art industry becomes more inclusive, there is a growing awareness of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) artists who have always been a part of the art scene, but have never been recognized for their work.
What does this mean for students and their art educators?
Most art students are ahead of the game when they enter their art and aesthetic-based classes because of the knowledge they can gain just from viewing a slew of artwork on social media. This left photography professor, Paul D'Amato, stumped as to how his photo students were so advanced when it came to even his foundational photography classes.
"The challenge to educators is to really understand what the cell phone camera is doing and address that issue." D'Amato says.
What about exhibits and galleries?
Most art students are ahead of the game when they enter their art and aesthetic-based classes because of the knowledge they can gain just from viewing a slew of artwork on social media. This left photography professor, Paul D'Amato, stumped as to how his photo students were so advanced when it came to even his foundational photography classes.
"The challenge to educators is to really understand what the cell phone camera is doing and address that issue." D'Amato says.
“Artists in a lot of ways are like goldfish. They will occupy the space that is available to them.”
Meg Duguid
Meg Duguid, director of exhibitions at Columbia, has seen first-hand the impact technology and social media has on the types of art submitted for display and how artists have had to conform to what this demands from them.
"Artists in a lot of ways are like goldfish," Duguid says. "They will occupy the space that is available to them."
Duguid saw how exhibitions were only being displayed across social media platforms and online within the past year. Along the same lines of social media, platforms such as Zoom and Twitch have become a hot-spot for sharing art that are more performative and multimedia.
"I think the question becomes, how is an institution going to expand to allow for that?" Duguid says. "Or will we see new things popping up that start to define virtual or hybrid spaces that might not be white walls, or have giant ceilings meant for massive physical sculptures?"
Art is not exempt from the changes the pandemic brought. This transition from in-person to online seems to be sticking for all media in the art industry. This leaves it up to artists for how they plan to share their art in the future.
What about NFTs?
NFTs or non-fungible tokens are digitally created works of art that are sold on online bidding platforms at high selling points. Only the original piece of virtual art can be sold, though it may be easily recreated and spread across social media platforms. NFTs have just recently entered the art scene through digital art bidding and come in a variety of forms whether that be virtual fashion, trading cards or photography.
"What does that mean to own the first tweet?" Duguid asks. "Wasn't that something that was intended to be for everyone? I do wonder how an NFTs does anything more than kind of push something up into a luxury goods platform, rather than being about quantifying someone's practice."
What should artists do now?
Now the real art has become how to effectively display a work of art at all. This leaves it up to the artist and how they feel their art should be received and represented even if that's not in a picture-frame on a wall.
"In every exhibition, you take on either online or in reality, you should learn something as an artist, and you should get something out of putting work in an exhibition." Duguid says.
Whether or not social media will truly give art its deserved admiration or not, this is the direction art consumption is heading in and artists must prepare to conform to it.
“You have to accept that there's no changing it," D'Amato says. "No putting the toothpaste back in the tube.”
