Pozycja dzieła i instytucji sztuki w dobie mediów społecznościowych: Zachęta oraz Cosmos Muzeum

Abstract

This work focuses on considering the position that an artwork and an institution of art hold in the age of social media. Two popular places in Warsaw: Zachęta and Cosmos Muzeum were used as examples for undertaking a comparative analysis. The work has been divided into two parts – the first is of a theoretical and methodological nature. It introduces the complex issues of contemporary art, visuality in social media, as well as the art of narration and self-creation. The second part of the work is a comparative analysis of two examples – each of them contains subsections on the identity of a place and its history, presence in social media and activities outside art. The direct inspiration for taking up the considerations was the fate of a series of installations created by the Japanese contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama, which once broke popularity records on Instagram, and Kusama was called “the most instagrammed artist in the world”. The collection of materials for analysis took place at a specific time, during the coronavirus pandemic, which left a clear mark on the activities of cultural institutions. It was a time when social media benefited and through which cultural institutions could continue their activities and reach recipients. For many cultural institutions and museums, the pandemic has become an opportunity to find new forms of communication and present art and Zachęta can be used as an example. This is important especially for contemporary art, which is often perceived as difficult to accept and incomprehensible. The article also presents the main problems and issues of contemporary art against the background of the specificity of contemporary culture immersed in the virtual world, with social media at the forefront. The article also focuses on the issue of visuality and aesthetics.