“Web users obsessively scroll through images online, but art museum attendance is down, especially at large premier institutions.”
Social media has had an undeniable impact on art and how it is perceived and presented. Social media has given a platform to anybody with a phone and internet connection, making pictures available to thousands of people with just one click of a button. This may seem like a good thing at first but this high level of exposure has decreased people’s interest in leaving the house and seeing the art in person. The accessibility that social media has allowed for art has lowered the standard for artistic expression. Since art is so easy to produce and share, the average amount of effort and care gone into every art work has gone down in my opinion. I think before social media, art was appreciated more because everytime it was seen it was viewed in person, where you can see every last detail and texture. Nowadays, it is so easy to replicate artworks that a proliferation of images flood social media. Apps such as Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram, offer users an endless amount of pictures to scroll through that are customized to their liking. Overall, peoples contentment with missing out on in-person art institutions is mainly due to the amount of material at their disposal through apps such as Instagram. You would think this art exposure would help grow in-person institutions but in reality people’s view on art is becoming less appreciative. This is because the bar of art has been lowered over the years. This makes sense since newbies, and experts both can post their works of art to social media, so users are receiving exposure to artists of all different levels of talent. While this exposure to art seems nice, it has oversaturated the market, making it harder for talented artists to get noticed by the populace. Ultimately I believe social media has had an overall negative impact on art. Although it has heavily increased people’s accessibility to art, it has also lowered the artistic bar and may fail to bring a talented artist their deserved fanbase due to oversaturation. I think that there are positive and negative impacts of social media on art and they need to be balanced in order to maximize the positive influence it has on art.
I like how you effectively articulate how social media platforms have democratized access to art, allowing anyone with an internet connection to share their work and reach a wide audience.
Additionally, I like how you explain the consequences of this increased accessibility, particularly in terms of diminishing appreciation for in-person art experiences and potentially lowering the quality standards for artistic expression. You astutely point out how the ease of replication and proliferation of images on social media platforms can contribute to oversaturation and make it difficult for talented artists to stand out.