Thesis of the Royal Art Academy, The Hague, 2024
BA Fine Arts
In the landscape of modern society, alienation is a common denominator to the experience of individuals. Whether this is due to society’s perpetual acceleration, or the experience of life through the ever-present lens of consumerism, alienation is an unmissable part of the contemporary human experience.
This extends to the art world, where the chasm separating an ever-booming global market for the arts, and institutions struggling to get their pre-covid-19 visitor numbers highlight the disparities in the experience of art today.
These disparities will ultimately transpire in the experience of the viewer. But how, and why can art be a catalyst for alienation in late-contemporary society?
This Graduation Research Paper is an attempt at exploring the relationship between the artwork, the audience, and the artist, so as to attempt and provide a comprehensive notion of the ways in which relationships form around artworks, notably through communication theory. This GRP will also explore examples of elements of influence in the formation of communicative structures between the art and the audience. Notably, this paper will discuss the myth of the artist, and its influence as an authority in the experience of art, as well as the influence of spatial context on the reception of art.
The paper will conclude that the artist possesses limited agency in the reception of their artworks, and that in order to provide an honest experience to a contemporary audience, the artist must seek to understand and deconstruct the codes which surround the audience's consumption of art.
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