Making sense of art and design industries

magshegs

You might know her name or seen her face. Or seen her art, maybe? The 23 year old Norwegian painter Nora Nesheim has been in the Norwegian media several times the past year. In the financial newspaper Finansavisen in February, she spoke about being a social media artist in a changing art industry. 

Being a BI Norwegian Business School graduate herself, she started her artistic career with the business view on the art industry. The young artist began using social media, especially Instagram, to show her self made art to the audience. And sell the art. The utopian promise of the Internet is a democratization of culture, wherein everybody can be a creator (Alexander and Bowler, 2014). Last year Nesheim began to work as an artist full time, only using Instagram as her digital gallery. Today, she has 18 000 followers on her Instagram account called Gallerinora. 

We know that the arts have undergone a series of dramatic changes in the last 25 years, including new modes of participation brought about by the growth of the Internet. The markets for the arts are complex and changing rapidly in today’s world (Alexander and Bowler, 2014). Using Instagram and social media as a gallery has become a quite popular idea. Many young artists begin their career by publishing their art online. But at the same time, we also know that some commercial markets have faced challenges posed by the Internet. Let’s take the commercial music industry for an example. Where changes to distribution mechanisms, such as the rise of Internet-based music streaming, and downloading of individual songs, have significantly challenged established business models and profitability in the industry (Alexander and Bowler, 2014). But despite these challenges, isn’t the internet also full of opportunities for the art industry? 

The syllabus questions whether artists will reach larger audiences through the Internet, or if they will be relegated to the low-earning end of the long tail. Personally I believe the internet and social media is giving many artists great opportunities both to find buyers, create a relationship with possible customers and last but not least to sell the art directly from for example Instagram. The artist does not necessarily need a dealer or a gallerist to sell their art if they can begin their career on their own. Just like Nesheim is doing. The artist gets the opportunity to be in charge of the primary art markets on their own. What do you think about the fact that everybody can become an artist and promote their own art on social media?