Ditch the phones, numbskulls

Our addiction to selfies is actually ruining art works

How honest are you? Are you wholly truthful, or would you only confess a wrong-doing if someone is watching? This moral conundrum which even toddlers have trouble negotiating was once analysed in some style by the former ITV documentary series World In Action. Secret cameras were positioned above a series of cashpoints which had been rigged to deliver a huge amount of cash. People came up to access a tenner, and found themselves the recipient of hundreds of pounds. How many people went into the bank and confessed that they had just experienced a major payola? Not very many. They didn’t know they were being filmed, so there was no need to be honest. In fact, some came back twenty minutes later to try the same trick again.

Last month at the Palazzo Maffei in Verona, a version of Van Gogh’s famous yellow chair by the artist Nicola Bolla was on display. The chair was covered in Swarovski crystals. It was also hollow. It was clearly part of a display, and not meant to be sat on. It’s an art work, folks.

Now, Watch this footage. Woman A plonks herself on the chair, and Man B takes her photo. Now it’s the turn of Man B, who plonks himself on the chair, only Man B has had a bit too much pasta of late. Chair collapses. The couple flee the scene, of course, not realising the whole farce has been captured on CCTV.

Owning Up is clearly a vanishing moral trait, but this is also about how The Desire for a Selfie trumps not only morals, but everything else, particularly common sense. Our world is simply an obliging backdrop to the pressing demands of social media.

Witness goings on this week at the Uffizi in Florence, also captured on CCTV, also involving a chump with a camera. At a new exhibition featuring Anton Domenico Gabbiani’s magnificent portrait of Ferdinando de’ Medici, painted in 1712, someone decided to go a bit too far in their appreciation. Here is an image of the picture.

Yes, he’s very grand, isn’t he? But merely looking at the picture wasn’t enough for one particular tourist. “I can do that, right here, right now” was presumably what went through his mind. What he needed was a selfie, mimicking Ferdinando’s pose, right in front of the canvas. He strikes the pose, he takes the picture, he falls. Watch this footage. And puts his elbow through the canvas. What an absolute clown.

The new director of the Uffizi was immediate, unrepentant and decisive in his response. “The problem of visitors coming to museums to take selfies for social media is rampant,” fumed Simone Verde. (I like to think that maybe he had been reading last week’s The Art Stack, see below, wherein I highlight the issue of overcrowding at the Louvre in conjunction with influencers on social media.)

The empty space in the Uffizi where the damaged painting hung. Spot the raised area on the floor that our photographer fell over. He blamed this for causing him to trip.

“We will set very precise limits,” continued Verde, “preventing behaviour that is not compatible with the sense of our institutions and respect for cultural heritage. The tourist will be prosecuted.” Selfies are now banned at the Uffizi, which is bad news for any hen parties hoping to visit in the near future with a large conch in tow.

Obviously a tear in an 18^th century canvas is a direct assault on a work of art, but what sort of limits can realistically be set by galleries, which are now besieged with people ‘just’ taking photographs? The occasional snap has now become a pandemic. Last week I went to the Siena exhibition at the National Gallery. It was crowded. But instead of performing the typical passeggiata in the galleries, where one waits for one’s fellow art lover to look at a picture and then glide on after a brief pause, thus allowing you to have your turn, nowadays one has to wait for one’s fellow art lover to take four, five, maybe ten pictures in front of the picture. Plus a selfie and a .5 for good measure.

It’s not just your average Insta user either! At the good old NG, little old women, who really ought to know better, were laboriously opening up their flip phones and filling up the memories with a dozen photographs of a Simone Martini Annunciation, while everyone had to patiently wait behind them. The shop must be in despair, as every single photograph taken is surely one less postcard sold.

The full burden of our digital addiction on galleries does zero for art history, but achieves the following; crazy overcrowding, irritation to fellow visitors, actual damage to art works. Yet how can the phones be banned? Will galleries have to insist that rather like going to Downing Street, or a Bob Dylan concert, people must deposit their phones in a sealed bag before going inside? Will security staff have to be deployed, rather like in a West End theatre, and walk around with big signs saying NO PHONES NO CAMERAS?

However, if it takes off, we will benefit hugely. If you continuously make mementos of the moment, you stop being in the moment.

So here’s what to do. Ditch the phone. Use a listings guide. Buy a postcard or two. Live in the moment in front of the canvas. And whatever you do, don’t plonk your behind on a work of art.

Thanks so much for reading The Art Stack. If you didn’t read my tirade last week about influencers overwhelming the Louvre, here’s a link.

If you’d like to subscribe for a weekly injection of arts news, opinion and information, please do via this button. Paid subscribers will get a fortnightly “Five of the Best” list of the most brilliant works in galleries across the world. If you enjoyed this post, do please press the Like button. See you next week!