Joseph Beuys famously declared that everyone is an artist. Nowadays, however, it would appear we are all curators. In today’s vernacular, we’re urged to ‘curate’ all aspects of our lives, from the posters that hang in our homes, to the posts that adorn our Facebook walls. Whole Foods even goes so far as to invite customers to curate their shopping baskets[1], whilst fashion retailer J.Crew confirms the aspirational status of such a lifestyle with its line of Curator slacks.
The recent glorification of the role of the curator can perhaps be seen as a product of the narcissistic tendencies of our social media culture, in which everyone has a platform to cultivate their online personas and vie for attention with impeccably manicured Tumblrs, Pinterest boards and ArtStacks, showcasing their taste, style and individuality to the world. Here, strategies of selection, appropriation and recontextualisation have come to be held in as high regard as any act of artistic creation. After all, one might ask, what is it that artists themselves do but rearrange and (re)present the world as they find it? - READ MORE BY CLICKING ON LINK BELOW -
The recent glorification of the role of the curator can perhaps be seen as a product of the narcissistic tendencies of our social media culture, in which everyone has a platform to cultivate their online personas and vie for attention with impeccably manicured Tumblrs, Pinterest boards and ArtStacks, showcasing their taste, style and individuality to the world. Here, strategies of selection, appropriation and recontextualisation have come to be held in as high regard as any act of artistic creation. After all, one might ask, what is it that artists themselves do but rearrange and (re)present the world as they find it? - READ MORE BY CLICKING ON LINK BELOW -