I have been struck in recent years how the internet has democratized art to the point that people now have immediate—if not imperfectly-reproduced—access to art from around the world. Years ago, one would have to comb a public library to view the Moai statues of the Easter Islands or even travel to Paris’ Musée d’Orsay to observe Manet’s “Le déjeuner sur l’herbe.” Today, seeing a screen reproduction of art is simply a flick of the return key of an internet search. Access to art has been somewhat democratized through new technology. I say somewhat because there are historical and contemporary problems of who owns and controls art and how art is displayed and which artists are granted access to the galleries and museums around the planet.
Conversely, the internet has allowed for niche commodities and design objects to enter into this blurred field of art today. Just conduct an internet search of Frida Kahlo and you will find shower curtains, throw pillows and shirts all reproduced from original paintings of this artist. Even Warhol’s infamous Campbell’s Soup cans, which have been replicated to the millions over past decades, can now be found as lithographs set within skateboards and updated t-shirt designs. There is no end to where high-end ballpoint pens and wooden toys for children sold as “authentic” and “ecological” have suddenly been framed as “objets d’art” despite the line between commodity and art having been firmly established a century ago. Or has it?
When the internet first went public in 1991, it was widely regarded as a platform for sharing knowledge, short-circuiting the post office for many communications and mostly, it was viewed as a social leveler of who has access to what. Information and high-brow culture were now suddenly to be democratized as everyone from the rich to the poor would ostensibly have equal access to information. For example, one of the first online art sites was SITO, an artist collective which originated in January 1993. Arguably one of the oldest internet-based art organizations, Ed Stastny launched OTIS (later called SITO) before the world wide web was launched just months later. Using FTP to house the images of artworks from around the world, SITO viewed itself as a repository for sharing and exposing art. Later in 1994 another popular online gallery called Art.net was formed which primarily showcased the work of San Francisco-based artists.
Conterminous to the art world moving from the gallery to the web during the 1990s, in the real world artists and smaller galleries were forced from overpriced spaces in Manhattan to DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). The internet proved a financial relief to many artists and galleries seeking immediate and cost-effective exposure. As movers were shifting studio spaces, the parts of the world wide web were slowly shifted into virtual gallery spaces for the future art world of today.
Skip to the present day and there are formalized art galleries maintaining a web presence from France to New York and Delhi. And from these very spaces come the entrepreneurs of the world wishing to crack the ceiling which previously separated art from the act of purchasing chachkas, replicas of art sold as coasters, kitchen aprons and t-shirts. Indeed, even traditional arts such as weaving and sewing with online companies like Etsy have allowed craftspersons to attain the level of artistry in some cases. One case in point is Salai Shop, one of the largest Pakistani fashion brands based in the US which offers up South Asian cultural and artistic heritage. CEO, Wahab Sheikh, tells me, “We aren’t selling clothing so much as we are selling intercultural knowledge while bringing South Asian artistic heritage to North America in the form of fashion.”
Yet, many artists still maintain the distinction between commercial, design practices and their profession. Cho, Hui-Chin is a 24-year-old Taiwan-born artist currently living and working in London. Recipient of the 2018 Cass Art Painting Prize and the Steer Prize, Cho, whose work lies primarily in painting and sculpting, was also the youngest artist ever to have a solo show at Soka Art. Having earned a BA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art (University College London), she is currently attending the Royal College of Art for her MA in painting where a significant aspect of her art is a reflection upon the relationship between obsession and humanity with influences from Chinese esthetics and Japanese manga.
Over the past two decades, Japanese manga and Chinese art have entered into western culture and virtual communities as product rather than as cultural art forms through the diffusion of anime in graphic novels, Chinese ceramics and festivals celebrating these artifacts. The line between cultural object and art has become entirely blurred when a trip to Manhattan’s Pearl River Mart, a popular icon of Chinatown, can now be accessed online. What was once billed as housewares and Chinese clothing is today sold as art and culture.
Thanks to the internet our knowledge and experience of other cultures have vastly expanded, but the flip-side is that culture has become reduced to mass-produced objects that attempt to reproduce what is effectively irreproducible given that art and aesthetics are more about symbolism and shared knowledge over individualist consumption.
