The new leading lady is a natural progression from the plane (and plain) offerings of before – what has been dubbed an ‘Online Viewing Room’ (OVR). What Came Next: Online Viewing Rooms and Not Much Else Yet efforts to ‘disrupt’ the status quo, in other industries rife, have been non-existent in art – perhaps, that is, until the novel coronavirus pandemic threatened the livelihoods and very existence of even the most powerful and best resourced in the art world. Indeed, this condition has informed much wider artistic discourse. For the art world diaspora – those located outside of New York, London and other major international art world hubs – viewing art primarily through photographic (and/or printed) reproduction is an historic tradition, dating back centuries. Specifically, they were limited to a flat representation – photographs.
Experiments with apps have been largely unsuccessful, whether in institutions developing their own (à la MoMA) or organisations making use of third-party apps (including Art Logic’s Private Views, which many commercial galleries experimented with before reverting back to emailed PDF previews).Īll of this is to say that, until recently, if you could not visit an artwork or exhibition in person, your options for viewing it were limited. The most innovative organisations forwent printed room sheets or walking sheets in favour of PDFs or audio tours hosted on their websites, hesitantly experimented with online sales platforms Artsy, Artnet and Ocula, and maybe even had an online store for merchandise and prints. ‘Innovation’ in the art world has meant forgoing physical invitations for email invitations and Facebook events, and sending ‘PDF previews’ (PDFs of Word documents with images) of artworks and exhibitions via email. More recently, we have experienced something of an overcorrection, with some fumbled attempts at engaging with meme culture (sorry, LACMA). Then came Instagram and, with it, extensive arguments over cropping images, copyright and reproduction rights, its promise hobbled by precedent and the conventions of a landscape dominated by artist estates. First came the digitisation of public and private collections, which is not ubiquitous, even now.
And so, art’s digital revolution has lagged, its opportunities and proponents a fiery ember which no-one in power was eager to stoke … Perhaps until now.Īvoiding a full digital revolution, the art world has instead carried out marginal digital experimentation, although the efforts have been somewhat ‘lite’. We consider art progressive and enlightened, but its industry and culture are not. When we walk about digitisation, we talk about democratisation, lowered barriers to entry, transparency and often sustainability, which are decidedly not the priorities of the exclusive, opaque, academic and globe-trotting art world.
Digitisation in and of the art world, however, has not been so swift nor determined. What, then, of change? Digitisation has transformed society, rendering the realm in which we live unrecognisable from that of only a decade ago. Harriet Flavel gives VAULT an initiation into all things digital as galleries and artists accept the new norm.ĭoes art imitate life, or does life imitate art? To look at the industry and culture of art – the ‘art world’ – we certainly see reflected the values and power structures of wider society. Image credit: Mona Lisa: Beyond the Glass, Musée Louvre, Paris, France, VIVE Arts, and Emissive More interesting to me is this question: will the art world’s digital revolution be for the many or the few? Harriet Flavel gives VAULT an initiation into all things digital as galleries and artists accept the new norm. Viewing Art in the Time of COVID-19: An extended edit of the feature from Issue 31, 2020