The gallery started counting my Instagram followers before they'd show my work
A gallery in Berlin asked for my follower count before they'd even look at slides. Not my CV, not my exhibition history, not the work. Just the number. I told them 4,800 and the conversation cooled about ten degrees. They said they'd "keep me in mind."
I've been painting seriously for thirty years. Thirty. I remember when a gallery would come to your studio and stand in front of the canvas for fifteen minutes before saying anything. Naja. I can't even be angry, I'm too tired for it. But I keep thinking about what that number actually measures. It measures how well I perform for strangers on a phone. It doesn't measure a single thing about whether the work is any good.
The irony is I'm not even a Luddite about it. I post, I show the process, I answer comments. My daughter set up the whole account for me and I've learned to tolerate it. But I refuse to make the account the point. I'll take the smaller galleries, the ones that still come to the studio and stand in front of the wall for a while. There are fewer of them every year, but they exist.
I don't know what the answer is. I just know I didn't spend my twenties learning to draw so that my worth could be decided by an algorithm in California.
4
6commentsSaveFollow threadShare
Thirty years and they want the number. I know this story from the other side of the room, a bit, but it never stops being funny in the bad way.
The thing is, I watched this same gatekeeping happen with a different currency when I started. In the eighties it was who you knew, whose studio you'd been seen in, what party circuit you ran. Now it's followers. Same smallness, better lighting. The number tells them nothing about the work and everything about their own anxiety, because they've stopped trusting their eyes and started trusting an algorithm that changes its rules weekly.
I can't even tell you to fight it. I've watched younger artists spend five years building an audience so a door opens, and they arrive at the door exhausted and the door has moved. The system eats the earnest ones.
You paint for thirty years and the canvas still tells you the truth. That's the only count that ever mattered. The gallery was always going to be a gamble anyway; now it just costs you your dignity before it costs you your sleep.
The "better lighting" bit got me. That's exactly what it is. Same gatekeeping, new costume.
I'm much younger in it than you, only a few years in, so I can't speak to the eighties. But I started in an office job before this, and I know the anxiety you're describing from the other side too. The people who'd never once looked at my work would ask about engagement rates like it was the only question that mattered. It's a shorthand for people who don't trust their own taste enough to say what they actually think of a painting.
What gets me is the number means nothing anyway. Half those followers are bots or people who liked one pastel portrait three months ago and scrolled on forever. You could have 4,800 or 48,000 and it still wouldn't tell them if you can draw a hand that looks like a hand. Somebody is going to miss out on a really good artist because they wanted a nicer follower count and I find that a little comforting, honestly. Their loss, not yours.
The "better lighting" line landed for me too, so I'm glad it landed for someone else. And you're right that it's not new. I've been around long enough to watch the gatekeeping change clothes twice now. First it was who you knew, then it was where you showed, now it's how many strangers tap a heart. Same door, new bouncer.
That bit about people not trusting their own taste is exactly it. The number lets them outsource the judgment. Nobody has to stand in front of the canvas and say what they actually think anymore. Safer that way, for them.
Your office-job experience counts more than you think. You've seen the machinery from the inside, that's not nothing. It means you know what you're refusing when you refuse it.
Small marketing department, that's exactly it. I never wanted that job either and I'm not going to take it now. But the urban sketching thing you mentioned, that's the part that gives me some hope. A community where nobody cares about the number because the work itself is the currency. I see it with the young painters at the academy too, some of them. There's a hunger to get back to something someone can actually look at without a screen in between. Maybe that's where it goes. The galleries will catch up when they have to.