ABSTRACT
In the artworld, and here I use Arthur Danto’s term “artworld” to signal that it is a thing in its own right, we are now witnessing the rise of artists whose careers and bodies of work exist almost exclusively on web-based digital platforms. While these platforms once promised freedom and independence and a way of bypassing the galleries, museums, and institutional gatekeepers, we have also discovered they are technically unstable and can foster paranoia and resentful behaviors. Moreover, these platforms often become places that can proliferate hatred of any difference—whether that be sexual, cultural, or political. The freedom once offered by these platforms is now a transitory illusion, as website hyperlinks are corrupted or fail and Instagram accounts are cancelled, potentially erasing much of an artist’s history. This capacity for erasure is driven by new media technology, globalization, and new structures of work and consumption. This chapter takes the seminal act of US pop artist Robert Rauschenberg’s erasure of a drawing by abstract expressionist painter Willem de Kooning in 1953 as point of departure that perhaps implicitly signaled that an echo or trace might be all that is valued in the future that we now inhabit. This future is now defined by the impact of technologies such as Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, smartphones, and Instagram—all of which are redefining the archival integrity of our shared contemporary artworld.
