Art has not been the same since man discovered that it need not be appreciated only by a small segment of people, but that he could reproduce it with technology and let every segment of the population experience it.
Technical reproduction through the printing press, lithography, and the internet has made art accessible. Before, you had to be able to travel to galleries or museums, or to buy original works, in order to have the chance to experience art. Now, a work of art can be reproduced and distributed to the general public in a wide variety of printed and digital forms.
The democratization of art has changed the way people interact with art—making it possible for anyone to engage with it regardless of their socioeconomic status—and it has changed the way artists create and distribute their work.
It is worth mentioning that, although in this essay I analyze art referring specifically to painting, there have also been phenomena of democratization in other fine arts that have transformed the way we interact with them: in music, radio and records replaced chamber music; in sculpture, the use of digital modeling technologies has made it possible to create sculptures without having to alter any material at all.
Art has become far more democratic. In the past, a few galleries, museums, and critics were the ones who decided what counted as "good" art. This meant that certain styles and kinds of art were accepted while artists who didn't conform to the norm were ignored.
Thanks to the technological reproduction of art, artists can now distribute their art directly to their audience, bypassing any gallery, museum, or critic. This has led to a far more diverse artistic scene, with a great range of styles and perspectives.
Technical reproduction has also changed the way artists create their work. Whereas in the past they were limited by the materials and techniques within their reach, and their works were unique and unrepeatable, now they can create works that can be easily reproduced and distributed through media such as digital art.
While the greatest impact that the technical reproduction of art has had on society has been to transform the way people experience it, making it more democratic, it also carries certain elements that make it inferior to the unique work of art.
The main problem lies in the fact that the reproduction is not the same as the original work of art. It lacks the "here and now of the work of art—its unique existence in the place where it happens to be" (Benjamin, Walter). The only thing that gives a work of art its authenticity is its existence in the present moment, which accounts for everything the work means, from the persistence of its materials to its history.
Reproduction severs the work from tradition. Tradition is the way we understand and interpret art, grounding ourselves in the past. Tradition is a collective, generational understanding of art. Without this tradition, we are incapable of appreciating art's real meaning.
With the loss of tradition, the work risks becoming a commodity—mass-produced and mass-consumed—losing any value as a unique work of art. This has a great impact on the way we understand and interpret art, and forces us to reassess its place in our society.
This lack of meaning in art—owing to its being created with the sole aim of being reproduced—is already wreaking havoc on the creation of works and on the way society interacts with them. Some claim that in recent years there has been a decline in the quality of our sciences and our literature, but perhaps art is living through this decline too (Greer, 2021 and Douthat, 2021). This can be seen in the absence of a guide, or a clear leader, in the art world. Artists like Da Vinci, Botticelli, or Michelangelo once set the standard that the art world followed. Who does that today?
In a globalized world, where anyone can create a simple work that gets reproduced and goes viral on the internet, what value does the work of art hold? Does it still make sense to keep creating magnificent works? Answering this question is the central challenge of twenty-first-century art. If art cannot justify its existence, it will lose its social importance and be forgotten—which would be a great loss for all of humanity.
References
Benjamin, W. (2007). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader, 25-33. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446269534.n3
Douthat, R. (2021). The Decadent Society: America Before and After the Pandemic. Simon & Schuster.
Greer, T. Where Have All the Great Works Gone? (2021, 25 mayo). The Scholar’s Stage. https://scholars-stage.org/where-have-all-the-great-works-gone/