The past eight years has seen a boom in the Do It Yourself industry, mainly fuelled by the television viewing public’s endless appetite for interior design programmes. The DIY craze has had a consequential effect on the art and craft industry, influencing the way art is being bought and sold. The middle class low end of the art buying market, have been inspired by the popularization of art buying, the high end market has remained largely unaffected. These television programmes have motivated new buyers to enter into the market place, but has also had a profound influence on their taste and expectation of art. Whilst this new influx of art buyers should be seen as a positive, the problems are in their impression of what good art is and also their appreciation of craft and quality.

In the past arts relationship with popular culture has been a one way street where art commented and appropriated all that it wanted from pop culture. As lines of communication become more sophisticated the boundaries between art and popular culture become more blurred. The languages for making art are also those employed by pop culture and the media industry, this has made art more accessible to the general public. It would seem that TV, interior design and fashion are doing the same, appropriating anything from minimalism to the baroque. The problem with this whimsical borrowing of styles is that there is no improvement or development of the ideas and concepts. They are poorly constructed imitations, which serve only to blend, to create a look or overall setting within a room.

On many of these DIY programmes a carpenter or interior designer, demonstrates to the viewers how easy it is to make their own piece of modern art. The end product whilst looking successful displayed in the subtle evening mood lighting, in the cold light of day the work often appears vacuous modern art by numbers, which does not stand up to close scrutiny.

One of the main pre-requisites for the low end art buyers is that they match the curtains or have a passive and calming influence on the room they occupy, there is less importance placed on the function of the artwork itself as an independent entity. Walking around art galleries you can hear the familiar conversations concerning a piece of art will fit in above the fireplace or match the new rug. A big problem is the DIY audience’s expectation of price, when buying work and what they view as artistic value, when assessing a work of art. The view is that it is merely down to a material cost and production cost and less about the intellectual property of the artwork. Although buyers want to own their own modern piece of art, they do not want to pay the price of a well crafted product and consider the cost of an Athena or Ikea print as a good benchmark regarding cost and taste.

This new art market creates a dilemma for artists who are just beginning
their careers, as to whether they sell out, altering their style and price
in order to capture the potential trade coming from this burgeoning market,
or whether they stick to their principles making work that does not
compromise their own ideas.

Michael Robbs