South Facade of the Rijksmuseum
As we know all art is viewed through a lens, your personal lens. Your lens of education, upbringing, expectations, and preference, but this is not the lens I’m talking about here.
I’m not even talking about the expediency, and often necessity of viewing art through the medium of the Internet as it is just sometimes impossible to view art directly at the museum or gallery that it is being shown at and you acknowledge that this is not the best way to see art but in this case is the only way.
No, what I’m talking about is the growing incidents of people steaming full speed around an art gallery only stopping to take a photograph of a piece of art, and even this is paling into insignificance with the more recent trend I saw, with one of the worst examples on a trip to the Rijksmuseum, where someone was almost running through the galleries live streaming their experience.
Mona Hatoum, Current Disturbance 1996. Tate. © Mona Hatoum; Keeping it Real: An Exhibition of Four Acts: Act 3: Mona Hatoum: Current Disturbance (installation view) Courtesy White Cube, London and Alexander and Bonin, New York.
I’m not sure that this has just happened since the dawn of social media and camera phones, but I’ve a feeling that these have made it easier for people to cruise round a gallery or museum as a content creator rather than take in the wonder of the art.
It feels like art is being treated much like Pokémon and you have to catch them all, and is a matter of consumption and ownership rather than visual contemplation.
This also seems linked to the idea of art as spectacle.
I know that galleries and museums have to have the big blockbuster shows to help pay for the rest of the building and am usually more than happy to go along to these and support and view some magnificent art.
Recently though we went to Tate Britain to see the Lee Miller retrospective and yes we did expect it to be busy as it was a Saturday, but each image seemed to have about ten people jostling and vying for the best position to take their photograph of the photograph.
There was no opportunity for a calm experience here, in fact it got so claustrophobic and busy I had a panic attack and had to leave the exhibition.
After being outside for a while to calm I thought I could just try the other rooms in the museum, and was amazed at how few people were viewing the rest of the exhibits, this is all about spectacle and ticking a ‘must see’ off the list.
I spent a very lovely quiet afternoon exploring and had 15 minutes to myself with Mona Hatoum’s Current Disturbance before another person came in so at least I had that.
