A few weeks ago, Kate Mothes, curator of of online artist’s platform Young Space — a site dedicated to showcasing new and emerging artists’ work — launched a resource guide, Instagram for Visual artists. Written off the back of her own success with using the platform — Young Space boasts a sizeable 70k+ following — her guide aims to provide artists with all the information they need to use Instagram to their advantage.
As a platform for artists, the image-sharing app has its pros and cons. It’s impossible not to appreciate the democratising potential of the platform — how it’s brought the work of artists from marginalised groups to the masses. It provides an outlet for young and emerging artists — such as on Young Space — to publicise their work without gaining the approval of major galleries beforehand. For example, Canadian Bp Laval and British artist Genieve Figgis rose to prominence after none other than Richard Prince stumbled across their work on the app. Incidences such as this could never have happened a few decades ago. In a way, Instagram has shattered art world elitism: it no longer matters where you studied, or who you know, or where you live. Your audience is global and they don’t care about stale social signifiers any longer.
Oli Epp is just one contemporary artist who has risen to prominence partly because of the success of his work on the app. Working primarily in paint, his pieces reference the “identity of the digital age” through bold imagery and abstract figures that mimic Photoshop or iPad graphics. For Epp, the main advantage of the platform is the visibility it provides. “I could put on my account on private next week and guarantee 100 people to be there, or I could make a post on Instagram and have an outreach of 10,000, reaching artists, curators, gallerists and collectors all around the globe”. Despite this, he does have concerns with regard to younger artists being over exposed to trends on the platform: “This can be a bad thing as much as a good thing. They might be less likely to research historical artists, which can be an important way to develop a more critical appreciation.”
Certainly, Instagram is gradually changing the way artists find inspiration and make work, and people like Mothes are noticing the impact the platform is having on artists’ output. “When I work with young artists, one thing I emphasise is that Instagram is not the reason to make work,” reveals the curator. “It can be a very powerful tool, but its apparent simplicity can be deceiving”. Interestingly, Mothes points out that a certain type of artwork is gaining popularity on the app — “mostly bright, colourful, decorative, and flat” — and how that type of work is “increasingly influencing and determining the kind of artwork that young artists are creating”. She sagely points out, “It doesn’t follow that what is popular on Instagram is the best art”.
"Instagram is not the reason to make work. It can be a very powerful tool, but its apparent simplicity can be deceiving" — Kate Mothes
The illusionary nature of Instagram in terms of personal appearance has been widely documented, but Mothes believes that the app can create falsehoods in terms of art too. “From my perspective as a curator, there’s nothing more disappointing than finding an artwork on Instagram that looks great in a 2×2″ square, but then seeing it in person is a total letdown. I always talk with artists about how work ‘holds up IRL’ because if it only looks good on Instagram, then it’s not art, it’s just a background image for your phone. It needs to live outside of the Internet.”
Not only is Instagram significant in terms of shaping art’s physical appearance, but it’s also instrumental in terms of developing trends and nurturing tastes through its infamous algorithm. The algorithm personalises feeds with the content it determines to be ‘trending’ or ‘popular’ and ‘of interest’ thereby limiting the scope of what we see to a very narrow number of factors. The algorithm serves to homogenise our tastes and interests, and as ‘likes’ and ‘follows’ are a free resource that are easily given, what is ‘trending’ can give off the impression of having real momentum when in fact it has been prioritised because of its initial appeal as opposed to genuine merit.
When the media we see affects our creative output or aesthetic judgement, there’s a lot at stake. For example, If you were to come across a piece of art in a gallery that you recognised through Instagram how much more likely would it be for you to interact with it? Many galleries and museums are beginning to capitalise on this phenomenon. In 2014, the Frye Art Museum in Washington created an entire exhibition, #SocialMedium, based on public votes from various social media. The most ‘liked’ paintings from the museum’s Founding Collection were exhibited along with the names and comments of nearly 4,500 people around the world who voted.
As more and more collectors migrate to Instagram to find artists they want to invest in, artists are starting to take notice of what’s popular and ‘trending’ and make work that — either consciously or unconsciously — appeals to the algorithm. In Mothes’ guide, she refers to this as the perils of the “rabbit hole”. As she explains, “The more we are viewing art on screens, the more it begins to affect the type of work being made, and trying to imitate other successful accounts or create work that resembles others’ work, for the sake of Instagram popularity is very real.”
The ‘sell-out’ is hardly a new phenomenon — there have always been artists who have ‘sold out’ to appeal to the masses, producing work at the detriment of their artistic integrity for commercial success. But the concern with Instagram lies in its potential to relegate art to the fast-moving stream of internet clickbait, viral content, memes and advertisements, all vying for our attention. Worringly, Instagram heightens the notion — which admittedly has always existed in the art world to a degree — that what’s the most popular is the most deserving of our attention. While it might prove to be a test of endurance, we must not leave it up to ‘likes’ and followers to be the deciding factors in the type of art we make and ultimately, appreciate.
“Instagram for Visual Artists” is available for to buy here.