Complicity and Solidarity

The ethics of our individual consumer behavior regarding the work of immoral artists is complex. Some commentators claim that it is morally wrong to continue engaging with the work of artists who commit immoral acts. After dismissing consequentialist arguments in favor of this position, this chapter argues that we have considerable moral latitude when it comes to our private choices about art consumption. Our public art consumption, on the other hand, can have a social meaning that is independent of our intentions. The chapter argues that, ultimately, ethical consumption of art is about how we engage with art rather than what art we engage with.

Note sul rapporto tra artisti e televisione italiana delle origini

This paper aims to reconstruct some of the issues that revolve around the role played by artists in early Italian television in a discursive and non-exhaustive way. The principal aim is to discuss how the study of the television experiences of many visual artists can help to re-read some issues in the field of television historiography. First of all, the importance of the sources and their necessary integration in the study of this relationship will be underlined, with particular reference to the problem of accessibility (see the Rai experimental programs produced between 1952 and 1954). Secondly, we will focus on the relationship between arthouse and popular culture, as it emerges from early Italian television and develops, over the following years, in the debate between entertainment television and art television. As a third question, we will focus on a marginalized element, that of the audiences, and we will discuss what kind of negotiations the art consumption through television implies. Through these three issues some possible lines of research will be drawn in order to try to broaden the approaches and perspectives of television historiography.

#artoninstagram: Engaging with art in the era of the selfie

This study aims to understand how people engage with art in the era of selfies, digital devices, and social media. It examines the audience experience of an art exhibition, where visitors are encouraged to use social media to share their art experience, to understand how such an approach might change the nature of visitor engagement with art. Arguably, selfies taken in the art space enrich the visitor’s experience and engagement with art and function as co-creational, empowering, and authentic marketing tools for museums. Data for this research were collected through non-participant observation (ethnography) and netnography at the National Gallery of Victoria, in Melbourne, Australia. The results show that rather than promoting disengagement from the art piece, selfies in the art space become “networked material-discursive entanglements” empowering art consumers to co-create value and arts organizations to reduce their distance from consumers and reproduce the iconic authenticity of the artwork in the virtual space. The article contributes to selfie theory by overcoming the traditional view of selfies as manifestation of narcissistic self-expression. Instead, it promotes an interpretation of selfies as an empowering and democratizing means used by art consumers to develop narratives and identity projects in a context such as the museum where traditionally the development of the narrative is apanage of an elite. A further contribution provided by this research stems from the identification of clusters of visitors (i.e., reality escapers, art lovers, photoholics, and selfie lovers), placed on a continuum of value co-creation, which arts administrators need to be conscious of as they enter a more dynamic era of art consumption. By outlining managerial implications, this study provides an initial reflection on how arts managers can navigate the emerging era of the selfie in the museum context.

ART CONSUMPTION DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC: INFLUENCE UPON THE SENTIMENT OF LIFE FULFILMENT

Art has been present in our life since the beginning of the humanity, participating to the evolution of society and at the same time reflecting the different stages of human evolution. The aim of this paper is to offer a short analysis regarding the art consumption during the Covid-19 crisis presenting several convictions, perceptions and influences which are manifesting in the art consumers behavior. The research analyzed the influences of art upon the feeling of life fulfilment and upon convictions regarding the capacity of art to influence the life of society. The analysis is performed using data obtained from an experimental survey on a sample of 200 persons with higher education in the south of Romania. Data were analyzed using SPSS and Microsoft Excel and contain descriptive tables. The analysis took into consideration the comparisons of the results obtained using different statistical methods. Following the analysis, it was concluded that the consumption of art continued during Covid-19 crisis, the frequency of art consume were rather high due to the availability of various Internet platforms: 75% of respondents consume at least weekly movies on Internet platforms like Netflix or HboGo; 34% of respondents consume weekly theater on Internet platforms (online TV stations, plays broadcast online, others); 73% of respondents consume at least weekly music on Internet platforms (online TV stations, music broadcast online, others). Another conclusion of the research is that the presence of art manifests influences upon the sentiment of life fulfilment and upon the convictions regarding the capacity of art to participate to the consolidation of society.