When art stop being art?

While reading an article by Jonathan Jones I came across the suggestion that modern art is immensely popular but its owners are more exclusive than ever. Mr. Jones suggests that people visiting exhibitions and art galleries are very much indeed part of the population but not the ones which can afford to have a piece at home, these are actually the super rich of today.

The writer makes comparison with others artistic sectors, like the theater where every ticket is as good as anyone’s else. However, he says that inside the art world, the general public, apart from being merely eyewitness; don’t have the opportunity to participate. People do know and recognize names like Tracey Emin or Damien Hirsts yet it would be unimaginable to think the normal men on the streets would ever be able to set any trends.

The definition of what is art is set by a selected group of people, targeting a specific type of buyers, nevertheless what is it that makes a person able to do this work, principally when anyone can visit a gallery or speak with a dealer free of charge? Contacts? Name? Or even further, does that means that art are not made to the public? Therefore it doesn’t have any meaning.

When an artist creates a new piece he probably doesn’t have in mind who is going to like/dislike or even who is going to own it, still the one who select the pieces knows very well its publics. Another suggestion could be that artists of today are becoming ever so worried about its public and how to satisfy them in the most appropriated way that are loosing the ability to create the famous pop art.

Google Art Project - The dissemination of Art

Google Art Project is a collaboration between 17 of the biggest museums around the world to digitalise art works and introduce street view indoors, providing Google users with the opportunity to visualise 17 major masterpieces with extreme resolution and visit some of the major art institutions, as the Met in New York, the National Gallery in London, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Each of the 17 pictures can be accessed and viewed in details that are impossible by naked eyes, going beyond what the normal eye sight would ever show.

With this new technology the general public will have access to 1061 pieces in 400 different rooms and over 486 artists from any computer anywhere in the world, creating an invaluable tool for research. The project offer the possibility to create your own collection, allowing people to put pieces together that would rarely be seem in the same room, or even gallery or museum, consenting the common public to make comments and critics about the paintings.

The good thing is that Google Art Project is making art a bit less exclusive, showing treasure pieces to a universal audience and also giving the opportunity to institutions to work together for the first time, reaching millions of people every day. However, just a small number of artworks are available online, leaving on the hands of a few individuals to decide which pieces to pick or which pieces are worth. In response to this, Google said to be preparing to grow the number of paintings available in high resolution and dreams of a day when all the paintings will be available through the Art Project.

Saying that, Google created another problem, which is the worry that in future the public will no longer visit museums and art galleries. In my opinion, everything that is new generate critics and in the same way people were against gadgets like E-book, afraid that hard copies would lose their space on the 21st Century market, they are afraid of Google Art Project. I believe that art should be democratic and available to all citizens and by creating such a tool, Google is making that possible, even if it is just a few numbers of artworks. Google Art Project is changing the way we perceive the art world, making share real.

Introduction

This blog was created by the junction of different ideas. First, as part of an assessment for my undergraduate course at University of Greenwich, where I'm coursing the second year towards a B.A. (Hons.) in Public Relations. Secondly, as a way to criticize the art sector and the exhibitions and events which I can attend to, as to express my own views in both Arts and PR. And last, to learn from my own views, and sometimes mistakes, and from other people comments on these particularly sectors.