Your art doesn’t exist in a vacuum. When someone sees your work, they’re taking in everything around it: the space, the walls (digital or real), the floor, the lighting, the other art nearby, the label, whether they found you on Instagram or at a museum show.
All of this sends signals about your work’s value before anyone looks closely at the piece itself.
Think about the gravitas of the Mona Lisa hanging behind bulletproof glass in her own special room in the Louvre. That same painting at a yard sale might be easily overlooked.
Or consider the famous Subway Experiment. In 2007, violin virtuoso Joshua Bell posed as a busker with his $3.5 million Stradivarius during rush hour in a Washington, D.C. Metro station. Only seven people stopped in 45 minutes. His open violin case collected a paltry $32, twenty of which came from perhaps the only person who recognized him.
Many people blame the busyness of commuter life. But I side with those who point to context. We expect to hear street artists in the subway, not Joshua freakin’ Bell. We expect to have coffee in coffee shops and see art in galleries. Context isn’t everything, but it’s not nothing either.
Every context either elevates your work or diminishes it.