Users on Chinese social-media apps advise visitors on how to dress in harmony with art exhibitions
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskElsewhere in the museum “Bord de Mer”, a film by Agnès Varda, a late French director, plays on a loop. The floor of the gallery has been covered in sand; deckchairs are set up in front of a screen showing gently lapping waves. Viewers discuss the best angle for a picture. Each has around ten seconds to rush into a chair, simulate a relaxing beach scene and get out of the way.
Galleries across the world are attracting snap-happy youngsters eager to impress their online followers. Immersive exhibitions of the art of Yayoi Kusama and Vincent van Gogh have drawn camera-wielding crowds from Melbourne to New York. But in China the marriage of art and social media is especially conspicuous. The country’s private museums have long been subject to oversight by local bureaucrats.
These technological and demographic shifts are opening up old debates about the role and value of art. What is it for, diversion or edification—and who has the authority to say? For centuries, museums, curators and collectors have judged what is enduring and what is schlock. They sought to interpret the intentions, influences and contexts of each piece. On social media, that hierarchy is upended and scholarly exposition discarded.
Some internet celebrities seem to care about art for art’s sake. Ms Cao’s feed on Weibo, a microblogging service on which she has over 267,000 fans, is a mix of museum selfies and photos of the works. She does not post lengthy captions about the artists or canvases, but strives to “take pictures that can really show the glamour and the beauty of the artwork”, and to dress in “harmony” with the exhibits.
In China and beyond, apps with hundreds of millions of users will increasingly shape the ways visual art is displayed and consumed—and ultimately, because artists want their work to be seen and bought, how it is created. When Ms Cao promoted an exhibition of Raphael’s work in Beijing, the vast majority of comments remarked on her appearance rather than the art. Piggybacking on her post, the organisers promised that visitors to the show “may come across beautiful people like her”.
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