So much can happen in ten years.
If the cast of Rent can measure a year in daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, and cups of coffee, how do we begin to measure ten years in the art world?
Perhaps in gallery openings, in biennials, in canvases and call for entries?
Existential grappling with time aside, it's difficult to understand the climate and impact of the times as you are in them. After thinking back on what happened in the last ten years for Artwork Archive, we are making predictions for the next ten.
Based on our experiences, talks with artists, and a worldwide survey of artists, here are our predictions about where we envision art and artists’ careers going in the new decade.
We look forward to seeing how these current and developing issues will influence and inspire artists in the 2020s.
The environment & climate change
As we globally experience climate change and are more cognizant of this reality, we expect to see artworks that continue to explore environmental themes.
In the 1960s and 70s, artists responded to environmental concerns through Land Art as a movement.
Whether the growing concerns in the next decade will result in an art movement, a general thematic focus, or a shift towards more environmentally conscious art material use, we know that the changing environment and our human interactions with it will be reflected in the art world.
Social Issues and Social Action
While art is always a reflection of its time, in the 2020s we will see more and more art centered on themes of social action and engagement. In the last decade, art consumers became more interested in art that examined social issues. We have grown to value documenting social movements and actions more than ever before and expect to see increasing attention on social issues and social action art.
The attention to socially engaged art practices skyrocketed in the last few years. Residencies, museums, and organizations are honing in on the social value of art and are promoting social art practice.
Institutionally, organizations are prioritizing documenting and displaying socially engaged art. The City Museum of New York has a dedicated Curator of Social Activism who works to tell stories and histories of activism past and present. Granting organizations emphasize that their candidates create socially engaged works and art publications highlight the important intersection of art and social issues.
Social Practice has become its own medium of art and written into art terminology in the past five years. Socially engaged art will continue to become more important and recognized in the 2020s.
Technology and Multi-Futurism
In the 2020s, as technology becomes increasingly a part of our present and future and as we are increasingly globally-connected, art will explore technological and multi-futuristic themes.
Artists are both using technology to produce art, and are making more art about the role of technology in our lives. Artists will embrace multi-futurism to process our present and speculate about the world we live in and our many possible future pathways.
These themes came to light when the arts organization Creative Time asked artists to reimagine the American flag in the project, Pledges of Allegiance, in 2019. Trevor Paglen’s contribution, Weeping Angel, is an image of a weeping angel, the name of a hacking tool reportedly used by the CIA to spy on civilians. Surrounding the angel is a cryptic circle of computer code that viewers attempted to crack. During the month when Paglen’s flag was raised at one of the sixteen participating partner locations, six people were able to decode the message. What they were able to decipher was: “CIA, IOC, Beware the Weeping Angel, We live in your TV, Don’t blink.”
While the flags covered issues ranging from the Flint water crisis to immigration and identity, Paglen’s work embodies the 2020s theme of technology and multi-futurism by critiquing digital surveillance.
Changing Trends in Medium and Production
Just as the subjects for art will shift and evolve over the next ten years, so will the media that artists create.
Be prepared to experience more and more art that does not feel or look like typical art. Artists will strive for uniqueness in the 2020s in part as a result of the boom of social media platforms and the digital ways we share work and information. With the influx of visible artists and art consumers, artists will work in ways that stretch their imaginations and help separate them from the pack.
Abstraction and other non-realist media, digital media, not traditional processes, collaborative work, and public art will reign supreme in the 2020s.
Non-traditional and new media will not only be the way artists create in the coming decade. As a reaction to this wave of new media and alternative production, be prepared to see a pendulum swing and push back to classic art forms and a renewed interest in the “masters" as well.
How Artist Careers Might Change
In the 2020s artists will need to be prepared to rethink how they create as commercial and artistic lines will blur.
Artists will need to become increasingly tech-savvy in marketing themselves and in getting their art across various platforms and outside of galleries. While the gallery world will still sell art, art in the 2020s will thrive in non-traditional settings.
Art Basel’s banana stunt, Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian, and hype surrounding it demonstrate that artists and audiences are critical of current markets. In the 2020s we will celebrate the absurd. Taking risks will be key for artists to find their voice and success in the coming years.
The good news for artists in the 2020s is that even if you’re no longer alive you can still have a renewed shot at an art career. In the coming decade, we will dig up artists of the past and give new life and voice to artists who didn’t have a platform in their own time. “Rediscovered” artists may come to be a new category for artists. Hilma af Kilmt is a major and celebrated rediscovered artist within the last decade. We look forward to learning more about new old artists in the coming years.
Shifting Views on Art’s Social Role
As art themes, media, and the artist’s role shifts, how we experience and value art will also change in the 2020s. We will place more value on community and experiential art as we deviate from normative museum and gallery experiences. The collector market will expand with a broadening definition of art as access to works that resonate with consumers grows. We will value art's role and the importance of diversity and representation in art.
Art as Experience
Art in the past decade grew to be more about experience and interaction than pure viewership.
The mammoth museum-non-museum, Meow Wolf, became a wide-spread phenomenon as a new version of a museum. Meow Wolf is continuing to expand throughout the United States, as pop-ups in different cities, through partnerships, and with new brick and mortar locations.
Likewise, with the growth of art as experience, public art has become an expected part of everyday life. Mural festivals continue to expand in popularity and art flows into businesses, parks, and outwards.
People in the 2020s will expect to be surrounded by art. This mentality will grow, creating more and more opportunities for artists. The expectation for art outside of museums and galleries and the desire for placemaking through art increases the social value of art.
A New Breed of Collectors
As more people start to consider themselves collectors, we will see more people finding their niche as art appreciators. Collectorship and the demand for contracted work from artists will grow in the 2020s.
In the past decade, as online marketing grew and artists were more easily able to share their work and find their audiences, a new audience of viewers found art that they were excited about and able to purchase.
In the 2010s we saw the rise of the individualist consumer. People were able to personalize their consumerism. Products and brands focused on catering to the identity of their buyer. Online shopping and delivery made digital shopping the norm.
As ideas about what art can be is expanding, and as art items are more easily accessible, more people will consider themselves to be collectors. More people will seek out art commissions and art that they enjoy.
While most art buyers seek out artists and meet with artists first before buying art, the ease of online shopping and how normal it is will allow the next decade of shoppers to have more browsing power. We expect art buyers to be able to more easily contact artists and for art commissions to grow as more people consider themselves to be both consumers and collectors of art.
Representative and Diverse Art
Art will become expected to characterize public and private spaces. As this sense of art in place widens, we will see a greater diversity of artists themselves as placemaking depends on voicing the perspectives of local artists.
Going along with the attention to socially engaged art, in the 2020s the art world will shift to recognize the voices of more artists.
We expect that with the rise in the value of art, its expected place around us, and the increase in collector/connoisseurship among average consumers, the demand for art and artists that are representative and diverse will grow.
Collectors will seek out local art and artists who reflect their own experiences.
Art will be seen as reflective, non-exclusive, and important to communities and individuals.
Time Will Tell
What do you want to see change or evolve for artists and in the art world in the next ten years? Create a time capsule or a list of your own intentions for your art practice in the coming decade and let us know what you are thinking.
At Artwork Archive we are excited to evolve with our artists and with the changing art world. We will continue to create new features for our users and to always value your needs and feedback. With so much change happening we promise to be a constant and stable tool for you.
