Literary Journalism: Art as a Commodity for Social Media Aesthetics: An Exploration into Artistic Tourism in Paris
By Megan Robertson
Originally released in April 2023.
Tourists taking in Monet’s “Water Lilies” at Musée de l’Orangerie. April 2023. Photo by the author.
I was surrounded. Encompassed by the vivid hues, the strokes, the light. In the span of one afternoon, I found myself in the French countryside, in a war, eating grapefruits, drinking coffee, surrounded by nude figures and love and pain and joy and so many emotions I didn’t even have the words to describe. So, instead of finding the words, I took a photo.
On a cold Wednesday in February, I found myself at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, France, looking at artwork I had dreamt of seeing my entire life. Monet. Matisse. Renoir. I was there, amidst the beauty of it all, and yet…. something was wrong. Something was ever so slightly off putting. I sat for a while, watching hundreds of visitors pass me by, trying to discern just exactly what it was that disturbed me. A text message interrupted my train of thought, and I realized my finger had literally been on the cause of my disturbance all day. Everyone’s had. It has become a cultural norm to constantly take photos in museums. Nearly every person around me had a smartphone in their hand. As I basked in the glow of Monet’s “Water Lilies,” surrounded by thousands of tourists, I wondered: does our cultural obsession with technology and social media change the way in which we view and understand art? Throughout my time living in Paris, I have come to see how the intersection between artistic tourism and technology has created a commodification of art for social media aesthetics and exploitation. And I’ve been a complicit party in it.
Paris is one of the most romanticized cities on the planet. It’s been popularized in film, literature, and music - especially in the United States. Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire tap danced on the city’s streets in the 1957 blockbuster film, Funny Face. In his renowned memoir, Hemingway wrote that “if you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald sang about the city altering their heart in the jazz standard “April in Paris.” More recently, the 2020 Netflix series Emily in Paris has seen a demand that is 9.7 times higher than television programs set in the United States. We cannot get enough of the city of light. Americans, particularly, have what Vogue calls a “collective yearning” for the city, for its fashion, food, culture, architecture, and I believe most importantly, its art.
This cultural yearning was not lost on me. I’ve wanted to live in Paris for as long as I can remember. As a young American growing up in the rural south, I watched the films, read the novels, sang the songs. I had visions of eating pain au chocolat by the Tour Eiffel, walking along the Seine, driving around the Arc de Triomphe, and listening to jazz in the Latin Quarter. As an artist myself, integral to this dream was the notion of Paris as an artistic hub. What place in the world is better associated with art than Paris? So, above all, when moving here, I was most thrilled about the artistic scene. Indeed, in my short time living here I have attended concerts, plays, and visited nearly two-dozen museums. And I’m not alone. There are more than 140 museums in the city. The visual arts sector is worth 23.4 billion alone. Last year, at the city’s most famous museum, the Louvre, they welcomed 7.8 million. 70% of those visitors were international.
Coupled with the fact that Paris’ tourism economy is rated the world’s most valuable at 36 billion, it is no surprise that there is such a correlation between the visual arts and tourism. Many scholars and economists have taken to calling this industry ‘arts tourism.’ In working to define it, one essayist wrote how France and other nations “have used art as medium to attract art aficionados and have achieved in molding [themselves] as a sort of a cultural cauldron, where art lovers and buyers, gallery owners, artists, art collectors, museum curators, art students etc. from all over the world [can] study and buy art.” It’s not a new idea; art has been driving tourism for centuries. What’s new is the time scholars and economists are taking to examine it.
So, art and tourism are two intricate and fiscally connected industries in Paris. One fuels the other. As a foreigner myself, drawn to Paris for the artistic motifs it propones, I was fascinated to visit these museums and see something I, naively, wasn’t expecting. Technology, specifically smartphones, are in the hands of nearly every museum goer. If you stop and look around a museum long enough, you’ll notice that for the majority of visitors, their first instinct upon seeing a beautiful, or famous, piece of artwork is to pull out their phone and take a photo. At the Orangerie, with the beautiful curvature of Monet’s “Water Lilies,” for many visitors they take not simply a photo of the artwork, but they themselves pose in front of the painting. In a scenario familiar to any person under the age of 30, this quickly becomes something resembling a social media photoshoot; it’s often accompanied by professional camera equipment and elaborate outfits.
As I sat and watched people interact with the art, this photoshoot repeated like clockwork. Visitors of different ages, nationalities, and groups, all took surprisingly similar photos. A woman wore a certain green in her shirt to match Monet’s hues. Another had a professional camera pointed at her. One girl, who couldn’t have been more than 12 years old, had her own iPhone and subsequently her own photoshoot. Couples, families, and even elderly folks took selfies with the “Water Lilies” illuminating the rear. The nature of the photography was intersectional and inescapable; it felt as mandatory as the admission fee.
I fell prey to it too. On my first visit in February, my phone’s gallery was overflowing with photos. I justified the cultural norm, claiming it a way to remember my experience and likewise honor the artists. This sentiment is shared by many well-intentioned museum goers. I was strong in this conviction until I had a discussion about a month later with a good friend of mine visiting from Madrid. She is also an artist, who had just visited the Louvre before meeting me for dinner. Over the dim candlelight of the restaurant, she confessed that she was learning to be more present when interacting with art, focusing on her own relationship with the work as opposed to socially constructed ideas of interpretation and social media aestheticization. She hardly had any photos to show me of her day at the museum. Nothing was posted on her Instagram.
The conversation, in accordance with my own reflection on the use of technology to interact with art, sparked up convoluted questions for how to best interpret art in a 21st century setting. Is taking a photo honoring the artist beyond that instant in the museum, or is it commodifying their work into the backdrop of a photoshoot?
Our discussion led me to American essayist and art commentator, Susan Sontag. In her 1965 On Style, she writes that art depends on “the cooperation of the person having the [viewing] experience … Art is seduction…A work of art proposes a type of experience designed to manifest the quality of imperiousness. But art cannot seduce without the complicity of the experiencing subject.” Quality art demands an engaged viewer in order for a response to be elicited. To be moved by the art, you have to be there to be moved. Does technology impede upon engagement or further it?
Torn between the two ideas of commodification and aestheticization, I returned to Musée de l’Orangerie in April with the intent of examining this phenomenon. While I could have chosen the two most popular museums in France, which both happened to be in a less than mile radius from where I waited in line at l’Orangerie, I was committed to returning to the site of my own reflection. Additionally, I assumed the more intimate setting would be better for examination.
In the gallery, I struck up a conversation with a group of young women from London. They all wore beautiful outfits, had impeccable makeup, and were in the midst of a full blown photoshoot. While one posed, the three others would shoot photo and video content from different angles. They appeared effortlessly, simultaneously cultured, stylish, and beautiful. Their reasoning for the photos was similar to my own prior convictions. They were “collecting memories,” as the leader of the group told me. Memories that were posed and would promptly be shared on Instagram, she added with a giggle.
My conversation with these women helped solidify to me why so many of these photos are really taken - to increase the aesthetic value of one’s social media. Culturally, amongst Millennial and Generation Z social media users, specifically on Instagram, their account feed is curated to reflect a certain set of values and aesthetic preferences. Sakshi Sharma, an essayist for Elle Magazine, puts it this way. “Trust social media to turn absolutely anything and everything into an aesthetic. Not only do these blueprints come with set guidelines that dictate what you should wear but also your lifestyle choices.”For many tourists, the photos from their time at the Orangerie could be chalked up to part of their social media ‘blueprint.’
As of the writing of this essay, the museum is tagged more than 200,000 times on Instagram alone. In these posts, shown below, one can see the intersectional, international, and performative nature of the photography content from the museum.
In my observations, I gathered that the majority of the people taking photos appeared to be wealthy, international tourists. They were well dressed and often carrying shopping bags from other Parisian tourist sites, places like the Louvre and Angelina’s.
Most of the visitors in the gallery spent less than 10 minutes examining the “Water Lilies.” They took their photos and were on their way. As the shopping bags indicated, the Orangerie was simply a stop on their travel itinerary.
In examining this 21st century relation between tourism, art, and technology, I was struck by the notion of time. Ten minutes with Monet’s “Water Lilies.” Ten minutes. We waited for 30 in the entry line alone. Monet worked on his famous “Water Lilies” series for more than 30 years, finishing in 1918. As I looked around the museum I couldn’t help but wonder: how would this renowned artist feel about his life’s work becoming a photobooth for wealthy, foreign tourists? How would he feel about his work becoming something to check off of a list of “Places to See in Paris”?
I don’t know what Claude Monet would think, and as I find myself in Paris more than a century later, I will never have the opportunity to ask. Maybe that’s the beauty in it. Perhaps, for better or worse, each age determines how it wants to consume and interact with art.
Who am I to say that those individuals immersed on their smartphones are not, as Sontag encouraged, cooperating with the art and its viewing experience? Media theorist Marshall McLuhan writes that media can be a way to extend our senses. For people today, perhaps the lens of their iPhone camera is the way in which they really want to see a piece of art — a way that can be easily shared with their friends and family. For the young woman I spoke to in the gallery, it’s a way of collecting and chronicling memories, a way of recalling not only the art, but what one looked like when connecting with it.
Globally, individuals are drawn to Paris for its media and cultural romanticization, a notion that is predominately based on its status as an artistic hub. As creators and art-lovers continue to make a pilgrimage to this great city, they bring with them their ideas of art and social media aestheticization.
In my own creative and intellectual journey, I am making steps to rely less on outside technologies, which I find can influence my own sensibilities when it comes to the interpretation of artistic works. I encourage those drawn to Paris, before mindlessly participating in a social norm, to stop and think twice before pulling out their iPhone at a museum. Does their technology increase, as McLuhan proposed, the art’s seduction of their heart and soul, or does it render this impossible, due to its nature of commodification and aestheticization? For me, it’s the latter. I am striving to be able to look around at the brilliance of hues and design which have come centuries before me, and will continue centuries after, without the mediation of a screen.
