No, really, I don't mean it in a sarcastic way - it seems that suddenly everyone is doing some sort of artistic, uh, work, and is showcasing it all over the internets.
Let's recap some of the places to find art today (in no particular order, to name but a few):
We have Flickr, Tumblr, Ffffound, We Heart It, Picture Social and Visualize Us for photo and image sharing and bookmarking;
We have Deviant Art for visual arts and Etsy for crafts;
We have mags like Blue Canvas, Hi-Fructose, and Juxtapoz for contemporary illustration, painting and cartoons;
And we have about a billion graphic and web design pages to browse through, not even counting architecture and interior design sites like Web Urbanist, or quasi-art places like Environmental Graffiti that are more on the gossip side of online creativity rather than being truly artistic.
It's like everywhere you look, there's a pattern, a color scheme, a typeface that stands out, or an interactively shaped message of some sort. Even dish washing soap commercials nowadays use digital animation, and technology has enabled practically every single being with even a spec of common sense and a cameraphone to produce images with artistic pretensions. T-shirts have become billboards, bus stops and city walls are now galleries; stores, public spaces and waiting rooms compete with movie theaters with their giant, clip loaded, flat LED monitors. The perfect catchy logo is everything, and everybody with a virtual nickname is a star proudly writing and posting photos or videos online, calling it art.
I think that's great - art, be it a popular, dime-a-dozen such - is far better way to express oneself than, say, violence, corporate politics or pornography. I prefer people to keep themselves busy by making silly little necklaces or posing for a 365 Self Portrait Projects instead of, I don't know, taking themselves a bit too seriously and running for presidents. Because misunderstood art, benign creative concepts, bad poetry or images posted and re-posted endless times on the internet cannot do harm; misguided energy applied in politics or business can. Besides, some of those artistic attempts are pretty fuckin awesome.
I haven't bothered to include the links for the sites I mentioned above. That's what google's for.
And here are some of the random images I found this week that inspired this post in the first place. I also didn't bother to research the authors, but hey - all credits go to them anyways.
I agree. Totally! I was thinking about the same thing lately. That everyone is doing something and calling it art. But I have a bit different theory about the reason behind this phenomenon. I Think that it's the urge of feeling important and make difference from the big crowd that pushes people in the artistic soup.
ReplyDeleteEveryone is tired to be a part of some sort of corporate culture, be just an invisible speck in the mass.
And Yes, I too believe that expressing oneself through whatever sort of artsy thing one likes is faaaar more better than getting a gun and using it in the schoolyard or somewhere else.
I think it's always been like this. Most of the people are naturally creative; they NEED to create in order to express themselves.
ReplyDeleteBut now we have free access to all that art. It's easier than ever.
In fact I don't like the fact that the art is going in this virtual direction, but that's the way it is, no matter if I like it or no.
May be it's all good, new feeling for old stuff..easier access, more fans from all over the world, creative commons, etc...
Art is hardly going virtual, but rather digital - technology is more and more involved in creating said art.
ReplyDeleteYes, art is often featured online and the internet is used as a showcase platform; and in the case of photography for instance, you might say that the majority of people went and turned it digital for no one prints their shots anymore except of pros; people rarely use analog cameras anymore too - and thus you can say that this specific art has slightly suffered from the rapid technological progress...but only if you consider technology being harmful to art.
Still, there are plenty (even more than before) galleries, magazines and workshops that deal with photography and it's all in print. It's all physical, actual stuff. We shouldn't confuse the means by which an art is created and the means this art is being distributed.
It's a futile argument; newspapers or books didn't disappear since the online news pages or the e-book readers. Photography actually benefited from technology, look at all the editing options, storage, quality of image. Internet helps people to connect through art on a mass level, and you needn't be a part of an obscure, underground circle/high class society in order to know or enjoy art. Popularization of art is fine, and the broadened understanding about what art means nowadays is also okay - I am not afraid that quantity would dilute the quality of it.
All I was saying is just that I am amazed by how suddenly I see art literally everywhere, and it's not just me - people really are making a point of making things prettier, more interesting, different, and new. I disagree that it has been like this always. The middle ages were pretty grim times, and even in more recent ages art was constricted mainly in the gallery and museum. Now art is everywhere, and everyone is enabled by technology to make it.
If nowadays there is more art than ever - I guess it means that the people finally are going in the right direction, to express rather than possess.
ReplyDeleteHope so.