When did Art become ‘content’? Is it really nothing more than feed filler?

January 6, 2022

The purpose of this is to unscramble some of my thoughts about art (in all its many forms) being considered as ‘content’: how have we ended up here? Is it the right attitude to have? If not, is it too late to reverse an entire culture shift?

I think that in our quest to make art accessible we have oversaturated the market and devalued true creativity, we have turned it into ‘content’.

Once upon a time, paintings were in museums and galleries, stuffy silent places which needed a ticket to get into and certainly to learn about art and study it you needed connections and cash. Art wasn’t accessible. You can draw all the same parallels with music, theatre, and film.

Over time, every inch of the arts has become, with the advancements of technology and travel, vastly more accessible to most people in some way.  A million tiny steps have been taken over time; the majority of these steps are very good. Everyone should be able to enjoy music, paintings, sculpture etc. Creativity is fundamental to human existence and the arts are a profound form of therapy for all those who practice and appreciate them. So, public galleries and internet streaming!? Great!

The advent of social media took it to a whole new level (83.96% of the global population has a smartphone and we can assume that the majority have social media in some form). Now, all these forms of creation (from Queen’s first album to a virtual tour of the Louvre, to Betty-from-next-door’s painting of her cat) are available to experience on a handful of apps, mostly for free. There’s just one catch: all of this is viewed on a screen the size of a palm, listened to through bad headphones, it has to catch the viewers attention in less than 2 seconds (approximately!), it is as likely to be consumed on a train platform as on a sofa and we expect it to be endless.

Today, artists and musicians, in order to achieve any real notoriety for their craft need to put their creations on social media… and not just once, but weekly, even daily. They need to become their own PR gurus; plastering reels, Tik Toks, Q&A’s and stories across their socials in order to create a “brand”, with them at the centre. They need a ‘social media strategy’. Their creation, whether it be music, paintings, or the written word, on its own, isn’t enough.

Today, the creator is as much a part of the content as their creations are, and it seems to be spinning out of control. Sure, in the past there were iconic artists who elevated the status of the music or art because they themselves were so quirky and interesting that they drew attention. It happened organically, and generally you will find that artists are really fascinating people! But art, and people, are not all to be viewed on an Instagram feed. Art, and people, should not be for mindless ‘entertainment’ because it is all so much more.

So maybe this content culture means the music is heard by more people, the art seen by more, but are people connecting with art in the same way that they did when it was harder to get to? Is it being treasured as it was when you had to really want to experience and enjoy and give up your time and resources to savour someone’s creation? I’m not saying we put paywalls up (although the exploitation of artists is a whole other conversation and they absolutely should be paid more fairly), or we gatekeep creativity, I’m just asking questions and hoping that solutions become clear.

Why do creatives create? Why is it more than ‘content’?

I know what it’s like to create art because you’re trying to empty your brain out onto a canvas, and because you need to make sense of thoughts and feelings and communicating visually seems like your best bet. I had no idea what it was like for musicians, I imagined it was similar for all creatives. Having spent time with a few of those musician people, I can say it pretty much is.

People write and produce and create from their core. They create something that takes up every waking, and sleeping, moment. Something that is embedded within a much wider framework of not only their life and literally everything that’s happening in their world, and which stands on the shoulders of, and alongside, musical giants. They should be consumed by the 18th bar, the 6th line, and the keys at the end. They should be planning an installation, or private views or live events. They should not be thinking about how best to market their work within the boundaries of a social media post.

Good art speaks for itself. Good art, even bad art, and especially GREAT art should have its own place. Respected, revered, appreciated as a piece of the artist’s soul. It should be admired technically for all the talent and effort poured into it, it should inspire and empathise, it should make people feel and think.

I don’t know where the place for art is. But we’ve certainly not got it right at the moment. The place is not Tik Tok, it can’t be. Why should our attention need to be captured in under 2 seconds? Why do we need to be told by an algorithm that what we are viewing is worth viewing? We have completely corrupted our attention spans with social media meaning we can’t sit in the present, focus on one thing, or take time to work out WHY we love or don’t love a piece of art.

Isn’t content creation, at its core, just so we can live vicariously through other people? We consume travel content because we have a case of wanderlust, we consume fashion content mostly so that we can judge the outfits and lust over the ones we want or envy the lifestyle of the blogger. The content is there to make us ASPIRE for something, usually something unattainable. It’s not there to INSPIRE us. Art is supposed to inspire. Art is therefore not content, it is art.

So how do we claw back from this? Singer and songwriter Chelsea Cutler recently posted a few things on her Instagram, she wrote,

“It seems like so much music is being released and consumed so rapidly… albums and comprehensive storytelling seems less relevant as attention spans are shorter…I don’t know how to keep up with how insatiable our content culture has become. It feels exhausting to be constantly thinking of how to turn my daily life into ‘content’.”

We are so hungry, as a generation, for real meaning and purpose, so it makes no sense that we would push each other into places of frantic exhaustion because we are chasing intangible ‘likes’ and the goal of ‘going viral’, at the expense of our creative pursuit of the truth. Don’t we want our creative peers to articulate what we cannot, to process our generational experiences? How can they do this when they are trying to increase their follower count?

Art is created lovingly, painfully, sometimes slowly and sometimes in a matter of minutes, it is refined, recrafted, and worked on. The ancestry of any creation is found in the life story of the creator, in the history of the medium and in the context of the present. It is not there to ‘entertain’ you in the mindless sense for 10 seconds while you wait for the train. It is there to move you, to inspire you, to bring you clarity. It should be respected, adored, cherished, debated and the creators should be supported and encouraged to showcase their art HOWEVER they feel fit. There is never one size fits all, we know that by now.