Are We Complicit in Devaluing Our Own Art?
As children who inclined toward art, we often found ourselves picked on by our peers for being different or “weird” while our parents discouraged us from pursuing art as a career on account of it not being financially stable/lucrative. How’s that for not feeling supported?!
Meanwhile, artists, the actresses/actors who entertain us, the musicians who write the soundtracks to our lives, visual artists, product/clothing/graphic/interior designers, writers etc continue to enrich the qualitative experience of our lives in ways others simply cannot - it’s just that no one seemingly wants to pay for it.
Artists are exploited like any other natural resource. The music industry for instance, from the producers to record labels to streaming services, are all financially rewarded much more than the artist who actually created the music. Often, when someone wants to acquire the services of an artist, compensation is offered in the form of “exposure”. Exposure is not a currency.
And that brings us to modern day social media…
Once upon a time we could upload a photo to Instagram, it could be seen by our audience (sans any fee), and self confidence/worth and communities grew. But now, for the algorithm to look favorably upon us, we’re encouraged to offer upwards of twenty of our best photos at a time AND add another artist’s music for it to be seen (heard?), without any compensation. In other words - “I have to pick the right song for people to hear for my photo to be seen”.
Deliberately paging through the carefully and thoughtfully curated books of the great works of masters has been replaced with the overwhelming endless scrolling of thousands of everyone’s best photos - while someone keeps changing the radio station. And we keep doing it, offering our best work, disregarding the expense of all of our gear, the time spent in the street, the travel expenses, software subscription fees, etc, we keep giving it all away for free in exchange for “exposure”.
We are complicit in the devaluation of our own art. The daily overconsumption of social media leads to a general commodification and devaluing of artwork. If we’re not giving it away freely, we make prints and self publish books and zines but are expected to sell them so cheap that we’re often don’t make any money at all.
So while our parents might have incidentally been right about the viability of a career in the arts, it’s not because art isn’t valuable, it’s one part exploitation, but the other is our being complicit in allowing ourselves to be exploited.
