Businesses that deliberately try to change culture, that are relying on that change for their businesses to work, are always in for a rude awakening.
Humanity is terrified of change and will tolerate even insanely abusive, deadly, systems to avoid having to engage with a new way of doing things. That’s the world we live in at the moment… as regrettable as that is.
So with that… let’s read a little bit about today’s art business that is doomed to fail!
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The team’s overarching mission is to make art buying more accessible and thus widen the sales pipe. The core problem being that galleries aren’t typically short of artworks to hang on their walls. What they really need is more buyers’ eyes in front of exhibited works.
On a more abstract level, galleries do probably also need to up their sales game to compete in an era of selfie culture and trivial digital generation providing plenty of low cost, taste-customized printable fodder for consumers to fill up their walls. (Not that you’d call it art, but, well, wall space is finite.)
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Source: https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/17/artland-is-a-social-art-market-that-connects-galleries-and-buyers/
Why do people do this.
Selfies have nothing to do with the purchasing of art. Selfies are not a sign of vapidity or vanity. Selfies are a way to share your life with others who cannot always be in it.
Digital products can be and are art.
You would call it art… because it is art… and some people actually understand that art goes beyond your personal taste and apparent disdain for other’s choices.
Also, the app is a dumb idea.
It’s a technological answer to an incredibly abstract and variable rich problem… one that people have already tried to bridge through a multitude of websites that, while they do provide value and still exist, have never gone truly mainstream. An app, even though good intentioned, cannot magically change the off-putting culture that people have built around galleries and themselves.
No website or app can instantly undo the foolish behavior of the art snobs of the world and the galleries that feed on their bloated sense of self-worth by presenting themselves as ‘exclusive‘ and ‘unconcerned with commerce‘. It’s in truth, standard us versus them thinking… and it’s insanely hard to undo any kind of ‘us versus them‘ thinking because their thinking and behavior are self reinforcing.
After all, when you’re an ‘outsider‘ (a new art buyer)… what’s the point of trying to become an ‘insider‘ when they make it abundantly clear that they do not respect or care for you in any way? If you’re an insider why would you ever want to be around one of those outsiders… one of those new uncultured millennial hipster trash people trying to buy art that only you truly understand?
People are horrible and ultimately, the app does not lower any barriers to entry, only changes what the barriers are, and in no way helps the buyers of art get over their very first hurdle… learning what it is that they truly like.
So, do you want a quick way to enlarge the art worlds customer base?
Stop being an arrogant fart.
Stop arbitrarily declaring what is and isn’t art, stop demeaning other people’s choices, and give people the opportunity to engage with art without you standing around doing your damnedest to make other people feel small because you want to feel important.
But hey, people will be people wont they. Any excuse to raise themselves up by demeaning others.