Luminaries of the art world have embraced it. Collectors have embraced it. Auction houses have embraced it. So why is digital art still undervalued?
David Hockney, who started making still-life sketches on an iPad in the early 2010s that elicited mixed reactions, sells those prints for around $10,000 -- some more, some less -- compared to the cool $90.3 million that his Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) fetched at Christie’s in 2018. It was the highest price ever reached for a living artist (a record previously held by Jeff Koons). With this disparity between the two—the digital art being valued at approximately 0.01% of his master painting—it’s easy to surmise that digital art as a whole is valued less (financially, at least) than traditionally recognized forms of artwork.
David Hockney, The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire (iPad Drawing) - 2011
It shouldn’t be surprising: Photography, one of the newer mediums in art, is routinely valued at fractions of paintings and sculptures, though the prices are steadily climbing. In the late 1960s, The Museum of Modern Art purchased Eugene Atget’s photographic archive -- several thousand prints and many negatives -- for $80,000, which, at the time, was the highest price ever paid for a photographic collection. The current record for the highest amount paid for a photograph some 50 years later is $4.3 million. (Consider, again, Hockney’s Portrait of an Artist, which itself is dwarfed by the $450 million Leonardo da Vinci sold by Christie’s in 2018, the current record for the highest price ever paid for a work of art.)
Eugène Atget - Pont Neuf, 1923
But it’s doubtful that it will take 50 years for digital art to get its due the same way photography has. In our new climate, where most galleries and museums are unclear on how and when they can reopen, digital art is proving itself to be a formidable avenue to fill the void that art-goers feel.
Carla Rapoport, founder of the Lumen Prize, is helping bolster digital art in the contemporary art world. She created the prize in 2012 to support and encourage digital artists by giving them financial support (the prize fund is $11,500), as well as providing a network, helping to craft opportunities for these artists, linking them with museums, galleries, and brokering commissions. We spoke about the rise of digital art, how it’s collected, and what its future looks like in a world where smartphones are the new galleries.
What prompted you to start the Lumen Prize in 2012, and what was the landscape like for digital art at that time?
I have a journalism background. I do not have an art background, which made me uniquely unqualified to launch an art prize [laughs]. However, it’s probably because I didn’t have any art qualifications that I was undaunted by the prospect of trying to shine a light on an aspect of art that I felt had been unfairly neglected at that time by the contemporary art world. I think it’s fair to say that now, it’s definitely been accepted, but back in 2012, it was only computer art. It was definitely niche. I went to see David Hockney’s show at the Royal Academy in 2012, “A Bigger Picture” -- I went four times. I kept being next to people saying, “How did he do this?” It was this incredible interest, and a really successful show. And I thought: ‘It couldn’t just be David Hockney who was doing this.’ And the more I looked into it, the more I discovered this goldmine of brilliant, creative, amazing art that wasn’t getting a fair shake at the contemporary art world. So I thought a prize would lift all boats. The first year we opened, we got amazing numbers of entries, and it’s just gone from there.
Do you remember any other artists you were seeing at that time, aside from Hockney, while researching that really stood out to you?
Yang Yongliang - From the New World (Detail)
Yes. There’s a Chinese artist called Yang Yongliang, who had a work collected by the British Museum. It was a stunning photo manipulation. His career has since gone skyrocketing. I was very intrigued with how contemporary Asian art was being affected; he had a huge influence on me other than David Hockney. And then when I went to the Tate, there were some moving image works and a lot of Bill Viola. He’s amazing, but there had to be more than Bill Viola. So I discovered people through the prize and then cottoned onto careers of amazing artists who’ve since qualified, and I’ve learned with the prize as it’s evolved.
With someone like Hockney making iPad art, I understand he could make prints. But when it comes to something like video art, what exactly does that look like for collectors?
It’s been a question since the very first Lumen. Because the contemporary art world is not going to buy in until there’s a market -- or even a secondary market, really -- there needs to be someone who will buy it from you once you buy it. There’s lots of talk about stamping, authenticity, Bitcoin, all of that. In photography, you can destroy the negative. In print, you can destroy the plate. But in video art and in digital art, you have to have a pact with the artist who wants the scarcity value of the edition, and who you trust to give you a gigabyte file so you can play it on any technology that comes along. I don't know what technology my grandchildren will use to play the works I've collected in the years ahead. But there will be this huge 60 GB master file available for them to use, and that’s what the artist gave me. He keeps one, too. That’s what’s happening in video. And when you get into VR and other kinds of work, it becomes like sculpture, a thing that you own.
I always wondered with video art, what would happen if someone were to post it online? But I guess it’s mutually beneficial to keep it private.
It would destroy the value of it. Why would you pay £10,000 for something and then destroy its value by putting it on YouTube? The artist has the same wish to keep the value high, as well. There’s now a collector base that’s becoming comfortable with this. You’re also seeing interior designers working with screen companies to make beautiful spaces for these videos to be seen in the home and enjoyed in the home.
With the Lumen Prize, there’s a cash prize, but it also seems like once you’re in this group, you’re in a support network as well.
So in 2018, I set up Lumen Art Projects, a non-profit agency, and that became a home to support artists who qualified for the prize -- longlist, shortlist, or winner -- so that includes 60 artists every year. They become part of this network, and then through understanding their practice, we build opportunities for them. We’ve done commissions with all kinds of interesting partners, including the Barbican Centre and Public Space Art. We now have a partner with a museum in Norway, and they’re planning to reopen in June, which will feature Refik Anadol, last year’s winner. It’s very exciting. [Ed. note: The Sørlandets Kunstmuseum re-opened in May 2020, and “Re. Memory: Refik Anadol + Sougwen Chung” opens June 18, 2020.]
I’m looking forward to this year’s prize. Will it still be held in October?
The call for entries is currently open. We’ve extended the deadline to the 12th of June, and we’ve also reduced the price of entry because of the COVID-19 situation. I hope anyone will consider entering if they make this kind of work or know people who make this kind of work. The awards ceremony will be the 22nd of October; we’re hoping that we’ll be able to hold it at the Barbican Center in London if events are happening again. If not, it will be held virtually, which will also be an exciting event.
How many entries do you get each year?
We get about 700 works from about 500 artists each year. It’s been pretty steady over the years. We felt it was very white, and very western, so we launched an award called the Global South Award for artists who either work in or are from Africa, Latin America, or the developing economies of Asia and the Middle East. And we had a very good response from that. We also have a Nordic prize this year for artists in Scandinavian countries. We also have a free-to-enter student prize.
That’s a really interesting point, that it’s primarily white people submitting. It makes sense thinking about people who would have access to technology and the know-how to be able to do this would, by default, already be in a more privileged position.
Not necessarily! I don’t think that’s the barrier at all. Pretty much everyone has some sort of computer or tablet, or access to one. I don’t think getting access to the technology is hard at all. It’s gotten a lot cheaper. And they’re also growing a middle class in these countries, too, so the fact that we haven’t heard from any of them, I think, is really a lack of networks. That world isn’t really networked into the West as well as it could be. And we’d love to get kids from a disadvantaged situation entering -- young people, people in their 20s, who are in a very disadvantaged situation where we could have their voice on the table. The art world is pretty white; the contemporary art world is a pretty western, white world. I just want to diversify it as best I can, and broaden our networks.
What percentage of people submitting do you think are creating digital art for the first time?
I think with still and moving images, it’s often newcomers. But with the rest of the categories, with interactive, AI, XR -- those are categories that you’ve probably been in for a while. Having said that, the winner in 2016 was an Italian oil painter who decided he wanted a VR aspect to his work; he found someone he could partner with and they created this work that won the Lumen Prize. And he was a first timer! He found the right partner, he had the right concept in his head -- he wanted to go into his picture and look down. Just vertigo. And it was mind-blowing.
Fabio Giampietro & Alessio De Vecchi, Hyperplanes of Simultaneity - 2016 Lumen Prize, Gold Award
It’s such a great entry point for people, if they win, to have that encouragement and go on continuing making art of that type.
Yes, and I think that the barriers to showing it and understanding it and enjoying it are falling all the time. As the new generation grows up with these devices, they’re comfortable with looking at art on them. And I think this current situation that we’re in at the moment should increase that comfort value of looking at art through our desktops and devices. I hope so.
Artists interested in entering the Lumen Prize this year can use this link to learn more.