A lot of mediocre art can be a good thing
May 5th, 2006The conventional wisdom is that the rise in selling art on the internet will swamp the market with mediocre work. The implication is that a more restricted art world, with dealers and curators as guardians, would protect us from this fate.
In fact, a marketplace swamped with mediocre work is exactly what we should hope to see. If there is a large quantity of artwork produced, the average quality indeed may be low. But the average is not the important metric. What matters is the variance, the overall distribution. If there is a broad distribution, there may be a small fraction, say the top 1%, that is remarkable artwork.
In speaking to many artists, I have heard about the hopeless feeling of never being able to break into the art world, the world of dealers, curators and collectors. This sentiment discourages artists and discourages artistic production. Fewer artworks mean fewer great artworks — probabilistically speaking.
If the internet becomes the dominant art market, then no one need worry about breaking in. The focus can be on the more important question, “How to make the best art possible?” The more that artists feel empowered to produce, the larger the number of paintings that will be in the top 1%.
Of course, the discerning buyer will have to search for that top 1%. But since when did shopping become unpopular?
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Related:
Fall of the Art World
May 6th, 2006 at 11:13 am
Dear Karl Zipser, thanks for commenting on my blog. Regarding this last post of yours I would like to even go further when you wrote the following “In speaking to many artists, I have heard about the hopeless feeling of never being able to break into the art world, the world of dealers, curators and collectors (…)”. I would like to discuss the possibility of an artist who does not suit the Art world now, that maybe his/her work is of such individuality and theory that doesn’t go with the line or style of any gallery available making the internet the only exhibition option available. Many of the great past artists were largely unrecognized during lifetime and the internet nowadays is a brilliant innovative way to expose any work to the world. I don’t think that “not fitting in” should discourage artists and discourage their artistic production but it should be a reminder of the remarkable vision that goes beyond our times.
May 6th, 2006 at 11:51 am
There are many artists, and there are even more potential buyers. In the current art world, the galleries are a kind of bottle-neck: the artists need to pass through a relatively small number of galleries to reach the larger public. In the process, the range of expression gets limited.
The internet changes this, and allows essentially direct matching between artist and buyer. This should allow an individual artist to find the buyer who understands his or her personal vision. I would not underestimate the buyers’ ability to understand artwork, once they get the chance to see it. Whatever you can express, there is probably someone out there who can appreciate it.