Creative Chats: Social Media’s Influence on Visual Culture
Airbnb Magazine Art Director Nick Mrozowski takes us behind the scenes of our latest original art card and reflects on the changing nature of art in the Instagram age.
One of our commitments at Airbnb Magazine is to feature original art from around the world, including a full-page art card in each issue for readers to keep. For this month’s Italy issue we commissioned an art card from Milan-based artist Andrea Martinucci, whose work explores how social media and digital imagery is shaping our visual culture. The artist reflects upon social media’s ability to both hyper-present a moment from reality while concealing many of its crucial details. That’s something he’s familiar with firsthand: Martinucci spends up to five hours a day on Instagram for research, and for the 11th issue of Airbnb Magazine, he created a painting that was directly inspired by a photograph he discovered on Instagram.
We sat down with Airbnb Magazine Art Director Nick Mrozowski, who commissioned the artwork from Martinucci, to reflect on social media’s influence on contemporary art — and the role it played in this art card.
What first drew you to Martinucci’s work?
This entire issue is devoted to the culture of Italy, so we were specifically looking for an Italian artist. We actually worked with an Italian curator, Federica Sala, and she put together a list for us of interesting up-and-coming Italian artists. We were open-minded about the style of artwork, but Andrea’s a painter and a lot of his work deals with contemporary issues. He finds inspiration in imagery from social media, but he recontextualizes it and makes a greater statement about how we relate to that sort of imagery. The colors he uses are very bright — almost neon. It’s like super elevated street art — you have something that’s refined, and then on top of it you have these loose gestures so that’s pretty interesting.
How did this specific piece come about?
Andrea had found a photo on Instagram from a Chilean photographer, Carlos Silva. The photo was basically a painting of a classical Italian statue, but this statue had an orange towel covering part of its head. When Andrea created his painting, he added abstract shapes, colors, and layers, to show the different layers of our experience with social media and the different layers to our associations with Italian culture and art history.
What is the difference between seeing art on social media versus seeing it in person?
On social media you get the idea quickly, but usually you’re interacting with it very rapidly. In person you can stop and think about it and appreciate the brush strokes or textural details up close. It’s also interesting to see artwork in the real world because how it’s contextualized can give you a different understanding. A work that a curator chooses to place next to it makes you think about different themes or aspects. So I think it’s great to see art in the real world, but I see a lot more art on social media than I do in person just because it’s always there. Instagram is the platform I use to search for visual artists most directly.
Compared to when you started art directing 15 years ago, has the process of sourcing and discovering artists changed a lot?
Social media is a huge resource in finding artists, probably the predominant one. There are great agencies that we work with all the time, but when you’re looking for new names, you have to go outside those channels and the first place I look is social media.
Fifteen years ago, Instagram wasn’t around, so how did you do it?
People sent portfolios and agents would visit and bring books. They still do this, but a little bit less. I used to get so much mail; 15 years ago I wasn’t important enough for anybody to mail me anything, but you would get special printed booklets in the mail, and you’d also call agents and they’d give you recommendations. In the past it was a little harder to find new artists from all over the world. Another way was you’d develop relationships with schools and go to see student portfolios. People still do all those things, but it would be a shame to only work with artists that were at schools I can visit. It’s more interesting to find people from all over the world by combing through social media.
What do you hope people take away from this art card?
I hope they think about their own experiences with social media, but also hope they see a little bit of humor in it. You have this classical Italian sculpture image you’re so familiar with, but then you have the humor of the towel on its head and the layers covering up. That helps you think about all the different layers of Italian culture and history you can peel back and explore through traveling.
About the author: Christine Lee is a San Francisco-based writer and editor whose work has appeared in a variety of publications. When not writing, she can be found hunting for the best bowl of ramen or her next read in used bookstores.
