It's interesting to see how the predictions have diverged. Internet penetration into "gallery art" basically hasn't happened at all. Cynical people would say this is because it's unrelated to artistic value and mostly a complex sort of money transfer that absolutely requires unique physical objects.
Small-scale sponsored art through Patreon is huge though, with a large NSFW component. Kickstarter enables people to do print runs.
There isn't really a big "internet famous" artist though, is there? Would Banksy count?
He's certainly one of the most well-known artists of the internet age, but IMHO it's hard to get more physical and less virtual than artwork spraypainted on immovable buildings :)
I think you have to wait for people who encountered meaningful art right around the time they hit puberty (say 12-14) to grow into rich adults for whom it held special value (say 40s). So I would say 30 years.
ordinary time and attention scales are now broken -- we live in a tornado of information that is literally unprecedented.. in other words, dont hold your breath for this 30 years thing.. its not happening
Internet art will always be ephemeral. Protocols will eventually change, technologies evolve. You can't put your piece of internet art in your archives and wait for the value to go up. There's also just the barrier to entry on how you explain ownership of a piece of art that can be copy and pasted.
I definitely sit more on the cynical side, but only because I think the art world is mostly as you say, a complex money transfer amongst those in the know. Kind of a high brow pyramid scheme.
I disagree with the implied notion here that Internet art is any more ephemeral than physical art. Physical art, whether it be a statue or a painting, will eventually need to be preserved and maintained to ensure it is available for future generations. Transferring a digital art file to a different media or changing the storage protocol or making backups in case of data loss is just another form of art preservation.
The key difference being I guess that preserving digital art usually involves making copies and backups as opposed to there being a single-source-of-truth so to speak like the physical world. I think this is the major factor contributing to a lack of digital art in modern collections, it's just too easy to copy.
> Internet penetration into "gallery art" basically hasn't happened at all.
The arts industry has been slower to adopt, but there's definitely penetration. Net artists have gallery representation, and lots of galleries and other art world institutions are selling online. The key, though, is that many of them are selling physical artifacts of digital art or experiences since digital art is hard to sell.
This is related to scarcity, but it's not the whole story. Part of the reason is that digital art is more recent in the history of art and doesn't have the same cultural clout among institutions and collectors as, say, an Old Masters painting. Another reason is that it's simply not easy to display digital art in a way that makes sense to today's collectors. Both of these things will change over time.
> There isn't really a big "internet famous" artist though, is there? Would Banksy count?
What exactly do you mean here? All artists today, whether or not they make digital art, are trying to attract large followings on the Internet. Many tailor their content specifically to look good on apps like Instagram. The boundary between who is and isn't an "Internet artist" is disappearing since artworks are beginning to conform to what we can experience online.
I'm aware of ridiculous money payed towards artists online creating furry art. This specific subculture is the highest paying to artists that I'm aware of and for artists to trade their time for creating an image the client desires. The amount payed is apparently enough for artists to live while satisfying their clients. The clients will typically post the finished work online for everyone.
Most of my friends (tech workers in the furry fandom) also go out of their way to tip artists they enjoy working with, often up to 100% of the asking price for a commission.
We're trying to put an end to the "starving artist" stereotype in furry.
Not all of it is. I don't have the experience to know whether most of it is (neither sort is something I go looking for, I just see what incidentally pops up in various timelines), but there's definitely a significant amount of entirely chaste work out there.
Though also, frankly, so what if it is? They want something drawn and they're willing to pay what it's worth. Too many people aren't, these days.
This and the following three webcomic pages are probably the closest thing I've seen as "internet art" in it's most literal sense. http://www.avasdemon.com/2112.php
Although I guess now it's really commonplace, Patreon and all.
Small-scale sponsored art through Patreon is huge though, with a large NSFW component. Kickstarter enables people to do print runs.
There isn't really a big "internet famous" artist though, is there? Would Banksy count?