How the Digital Age Has Changed What People Want From Art Paintings

In this era of modern technology, it is simple to use many of the desktop publishing applications and image editing functions to both enhance and completely change or create a picture. With the advent of social media and the “share-ability” of images through services like Flickr it is also very easy to get feedback from people as to if your “art work” is any good.In the last decade and especially the last 5 years there has been a massive paradigm shift in what people want from art, and especially paintings. If we look back at history, with the exception of Monet or Picasso, many of the most famous artists of the last 200 years have been known as much for their skill at fine art and detail as much for their application and imagination of art.Things happen fast these days (or so it seems) and with Art, what many modern day consumers want is a piece of “mood” art as opposed to a piece of traditional “art” – what is art? I hear you cry – art is anything that inspires or creates emotion which has been created from passion for making a statement. So, going back to the point, modern art buyers do not just want what we call modern art but they also want a “mood” and “effect” to hang on a wall – very few modern day artists specialise in detailed “fineart” – those that do are (in my view) in possession of a skill which most “mood” artists (like myself) could only dream of.So where will art (specifically visual arts like paintings) be on 100 years time? I personally suspect buyers will put a premium on fineart once again and that we are in a transition stage between consumers not being that interested in fineart because it can never match up to what can be done digitally and consumers getting slightly bored of mood art. There will be a time where fineart artists are once again top of the pile when it comes to skill and respect in the art world.