The Art of Web 2.0 part II

Is Hugh MacLeod an early play on bypassing yet another piece of Olde Media, the Art Market? He is moving from drawing cartoons on a business card to large pictures on canvas.

The Art market. like (nearly?) all creative markets, follows very strong power laws such as Zipf's Law. Another way of describing this is that a very small number of people at the top take a totally disproportioante amount of the loot in the game.

But who gets to define who those people at the top are?

The Art world is not a mass market, so the definition of what is "Great Art" tends to be controlled by a small coterie (For example in the UK, a large ticket buyer- Charles Saatchi - pretty much defined who would be in the 90's Brit Art group by his large purchases.)

So what is Hugh doing differently?

Well, in essence he has already established a brand before moving into the Art arena, so - in theory - he can reach an audience without the current market establishment giving him its approbation.

This should come as no surprise to media watches or members of the print, music or video media, and in fact we wrote about the coming shock to the Art market c 18 months ago over here in The Art of Web 2.0 Part 1 - but methinks the Art world, which is somewhat self referential, may not yet be aware of what is coming.

(Not saying that Hugh per se will succeed - though I wish him luck - but this is a clear sign of a trend)