Runner-Up in Cambridge Essay Competition
Each year, the Cambridge Language Collective invites pupils in Senior schools to submit essays on a range of topics.
Named runner-up in the Cambridge Language Collective’s Schools’ Essay Competition, Miaa’s essay explores how social media has changed the way we create, experience and understand art, questioning what we consider to be art in the first place.
Drawing on examples from artists including Ai Weiwei and Maurizio Cattelan, she discussed how social media has made different forms of art more accessible, while also challenging traditional ideas about artistic skill and value.
‘Social media has fundamentally changed the relationship between people and art’.
Discuss the extent to which the production and consumption of art have changed due to mass use of social media.
Before this question can be answered, a prior one must be asked: what is art? Most people, on hearing the word, picture a painting. Schools reinforce this association, where the subject itself called ‘Art’ always means exactly that. However, art was never meant to be limited to the visual: it includes music, films, literature, and many other creative outlets just as legitimately as it includes a canvas. If art is simply anything created with intention: a photograph, a meme, an edit, song, short-film or painting then almost everything produced today should qualify for that label. This broad definition of Art is itself a product of social media, which has stretched the category of “Art” far beyond galleries and canvases into music trends, award-winning films and world-renowned poetry. It is against this expanding definition that any discussion of change in art should be measured.
But if anything that is produced today with intention is art, then why are some forms of art devalued or not considered to even be ‘art’? Social media is a potent tool for enabling new and popular ideas that can go against social norms. It has helped grow our relationship with art in positive ways, yet people oppose some forms of art that are pushed by the algorithm to the front of our screens as it isn’t what they are used to seeing under that label. The conceptual art movement is the most radical and the most controversial idea introduced in modern and contemporary art by social media. Some art experts even dismiss it as art. Conceptual art is based on the notion that the essence of art is an idea or concept and we should question what even makes art, art?
The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei exemplifies this shift. His work rarely relies on traditional draughtsmanship, yet a single image of him deliberately dropping a Han dynasty urn provoked more global outrage and reflection than most technically flawless paintings ever could, simply because it was shared and picked apart across social media faster than any gallery could have managed. Critics call this a surrender of skill to convenience. Arguably, this criticism misses what the art is actually doing to us. Traditional art was created to provoke clear, matching emotions: grief at a portrait of mourning, reverence at a religious fresco. The feeling was designed to fit the piece perfectly. Social media art, on the other hand, sparks a more honest and messier range of feelings: confusion, discomfort, amusement, anger, sometimes all within the same thirty seconds. This unpredictability isn’t a flaw. If anything, it shows that this newer art form is doing something older art rarely could do: reflecting the actual, contradictory emotions people really feel, instead of aiming for one ‘correct’ reaction since art is made to feel a personal connection. Therefore, social media hasn’t degraded the relationship between people and art so much as it has widened the emotions art is allowed to provoke, making it feel just as messy and unfiltered as the people consuming it.
This is not a new concept. In 2019, Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan exemplifies this idea of what art actually is through his artwork titled ‘Comedian’ which is portrayed by a banana duct-taped to a wall. This viral sensation sparked controversy; dividing critics, some heralding it a “humorous minimalist artwork”, others, like Noah Charley, condemning it as “neither beautiful nor does it exhibit skill.” However, the viral artwork was intended to fuel feelings of anger and frustration due to its ambiguous nature – how does ‘Comedian’ have more value than other more traditional pieces of art that require artistic talent and skill?
To conclude, social media has fundamentally changed the relationship we have with art as it has exposed people to a variety of art forms which weren’t accepted and accessible in the past. People believe that art is a universal language that we’ve been gifted to help convey our soul to people. However, when beauty is valued only by its cost or profitability, we have forgotten its purpose as the human soul does not hunger for perfection, but for the quiet testimony of another soul that has known truth, suffering, joy and wonder.
A fantastic piece of writing, well done.
