Friendship ended with Van Gogh, now James Gunn is my best friend
When we look back to now from a hundred years in the future, what art period are we in?
My third grade US education thought it was really important that we all learn about the Western art movements like Impressionism and the famous artists that now represent them, such as Claude Monet or Vincent van Gogh. There are a lot of art periods since the Renaissance, many spanning decades, and every traditional art museum exists to preserve and display these for years to come.
We've been in the Contemporary period since the 1970s. Since cheap air travel followed by the internet, there has been an explosion of art and cultural sharing on a global scale. One could say the only unifying art style right now is that there is none at all. Or perhaps the incredibly long ~460 year Gothic period to the relatively short 40 years of Expressionism can be compared to Futurism's relatively long 9 years to 1 year of Steven Universe fanart on Tumblr.
Regarding total viewership, compare Impressionist pieces that were viewed by a mere 4,000 people at The Second Impressionist exhibition in 1876, to this K-Pop Demon Hunters fanart with 52k likes.
Are art movements like Impressionism, which lasted 30 years and had less than a hundred total participants, now hundreds or thousands of fan artists posting their works instantly to thousands or millions of views? Is the Tumblr nose the new Pointillism? Will the 2010s be looked at as hundreds or thousands of micro artist movements?
Or is the whole concept of "Western art periods" too Eurocentric?
Or maybe, the importance and cultural relevance of paintings is dead to the modern viewer. The real 2D art appreciation isn't stills created by a few Dutch men living in Paris, but thousands of people working on individual projects in Hollywood. Maybe we're in the Superhero Period, and we'll be remembered for all the Marvel films.