The Art World: When Everything Is Bad, but It Could Be Worse.

Did you know you already have your own Black Suprematic Square by Malevich at home?

At least, that’s probably what the innovation directors at Samsung and LG thought when they decided to market their new TVs as “paintings.”

“We’re actually seeing explosive growth in the digital art market and a monumental shift in the ways art is being created, discovered and monetized. The biggest factor will be accessibility, creating a seamless bridge between the digital and physical art worlds and allowing people globally to enjoy iconic works they otherwise wouldn’t have access to.” — Daria Greene, Global Curator of the Samsung Art Store

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s a strange idea — not just because half of your new “TV painting” is basically a blank screen, but because something about it feels wrong.
It’s bad for the environment.
Potentially bad for artists.
And maybe bad for art itself.
Yet another giant corporation wants to profit from art.

As much as you might want to see Malevich on a turned-off screen or Kandinsky on a turned-on one, it WON’T be the same.

No screen can replace the feeling of standing in front of a real painting — the atmosphere, the texture, the scale, or the feeling of owning something that was actually painted by another human being.

Anyone who has visited a museum and stood close to a painting probably knows that emotion.

The problem?

Fewer and fewer young people are discovering it for themselves.
Various studies of museum attendance show that museum audiences tend to skew older. One UK study found that fewer than 30% of visitors were Millennials or Gen Z — people aged 14 to 34.

So maybe one of the biggest problems in the future of art isn’t AI.

Maybe it’s attention.
It’s time to cultivate artistic taste in new generations.
Otherwise, after surviving revolutions, wars and technological breakthroughs, the art world might not survive TikTok.

And this is where my contemporary art criticism becomes slightly uncomfortable.

Because almost everything happening in the art world right now seems bad.
But somehow, the alternative could be worse.

When a crypto fraudster buys an artwork for $6 million simply because it’s funny — that’s bad.

But limiting access to art and dividing people into the “right” and “wrong” audiences might be worse.

When the biggest auction houses experiment with memecoins and speculation — that’s bad.

But the collapse of major auction houses would probably be even worse for the art market.

When museums make huge parts of their collections available digitally and those images eventually become part of the ecosystem used to train AI — potentially working against the interests of living artists — that’s bad.

But a future without museums?
Probably worse.

And yes, it feels troubling when Samsung lets people display famous paintings on their TVs for a few dollars, potentially undermining the idea that people should buy physical artworks directly from artists.

But rejecting that technology completely might be even worse.

Because maybe this stupid TV pretending to be a painting is someone’s first contact with Kandinsky.
Maybe they see it every morning.
Maybe one day they Google his name.
Then visit a museum.
Then discover another artist.
Then, God forbid, buy an actual painting from a living one.

And suddenly this weird corporate experiment with digital art becomes an entrance into the physical art world.
So yes.

Samsung selling paintings for your TV?
Bad.
AI learning from our visual culture?
Bad.
TikTok replacing museums as cultural education?
Very bad.

But maybe the biggest mistake in all this art world commentary would be rejecting every new way people can discover art simply because it doesn’t look like the way we discovered it.

Because everything is bad.
But it could be worse.

...your worst artist and best friend,

hEhe and my contemporary art criticism

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