Keeping this in mind, World Art Day, a celebration to promote the development, diffusion and enjoyment of art...
world art day
Art can be defined as aesthetics of any kind that you can find in almost anything or everything. For many, art is limitless in nature. In order to acknowledge art, it is necessary to spread awareness regarding how it is important for us and how we should celebrate it. Art promotes free spaces for communication and unites people on a single platform to maintain peace and unity.
Keeping this in mind, World Art Day, a celebration to promote the development, diffusion and enjoyment of art, was proclaimed at the 40th session of UNESCO’s General Conference in 2019.
Art nurtures creativity, innovation and cultural diversity for all people across the globe and plays an important role in sharing knowledge and encouraging curiosity and dialogue. These are qualities that art has always had, and will always have if we continue to support environments where artists and artistic freedom are promoted and protected. In this way, furthering the development of art also furthers our means to achieve a free and peaceful world.
World Art Day celebrations help reinforce the links between artistic creations and society, encourage greater awareness of the diversity of artistic expressions and highlight the contribution of artists to sustainable development. It is also an occasion to shine a light on arts education in schools, as culture can pave the way for inclusive and equitable education.
There is much to learn, share and celebrate on World Art Day, and it encourages everyone to join in through various activities such as debates, conferences, workshops, cultural events and presentations or exhibitions.
It is sad that art doesn’t enjoy as much magnitude as it has. One of the reasons is that it is not available to the common public and is mostly bound up in ideas of exclusivity, both in the individual nature of each work and the elitism associated with its ownership – a concept that sidelines the essential communicative purpose of art, sacrificing it to private ownership and economic value. The art market has become soulless. The alternatives? Either art loses itself in a cult of empty exclusivity, or it turns to its audience. It’s time to wake up.
According to a German publication Die Zeit, in nearly every other market, the power of the public has been transformative. Social media and other online tools have given people platforms to articulate their preferences. We comment, like, and share like never before, and markets have responded by modulating their offerings to our tastes without policing our preferences. Netflix, Amazon Prime, endless curated content on blogs and websites – we now inhabit a world where virtually limitless tailored content is available, yet we have completely overlooked a stubbornly unchanging part of cultural life. The art world hasn’t changed. Curators still decide what will be shown in exhibitions while museums, at best, count the visitors. A few players maintain dominance by snubbing the voices of a surprisingly docile public. The people’s opinion counts for little.
Because public institutions and large events like biennials are dependent on galleries and collectors for financial support, they show only a few art market superstars and aspirants, making them effectively showcase for the tiny number of artists who have accessed the headline-making end of the value market. In many galleries of different countries and in Pakistan, gallerists have a chokehold on determining what is good art and what should be shown, ensuring the value of their prize assets. But these gallerists also determine who, outside this clique, is left in the dust. Under the entirely fictional ‘aura’ of art, with all its radical history, it is chilling to see that women, people of colour, and artists from other communities rarely make the cut.
Hugely successful blockbuster exhibitions don’t exert any pressure on the dominance of the magic circle at the heart of the art market. For older, art-savvy visitors, they are staged as an educational programme. For the young, blockbuster shows are an Instagram spectacle. Is anyone invited to participate in the selection itself? No. Instead, museums are serving the tastes of a few wealthy art collectors, that makes art rather meaningless.
It is important that all art institutions should be democratised. Audiences should come and take part in what is good art and what should be displaced rather than appreciating other people’s investment. Audiences can take up art as their own cause. They can make it a form of culture in which they can get involved; for which they can speak; which listens to their voices; and which, in turn, also speaks for them. We must set up an art ecosystem in which artists turn to their audience and vice versa, and in which the market learns to respect the voices of the many.
If the revival of democracy in art succeeds, we will all benefit from it. The audience will be able to relate to what it sees. The artists will find renewed recognition outside of the small scene into which they’re currently funnelled. The collectors will once again collect what really matters to them. We believe in the power of art. Let’s free it from the straitjacket of exclusivity and give it back to all those who love it.
