Art and the Selfie

I was fortunate enough to do some traveling abroad over spring break, particularly spending time in art museums. As I walked into the room of the Louvre that displays the Mona Lisa, perhaps one of the most famous pieces of artwork in the Western canon, I was struck first not by the painting’s beauty, nor by its famous smile, but instead by the sea of selfie sticks around the painting, all in spite of the Louvre’s ban on selfie sticks inside the museum.

In fact, even from a distance of five feet away, you can barely see the painting behind all of the selfie sticks. The throng of people attempting to take selfies with the painting made it nearly impossible to actually view the artwork before being jostled aside by someone trying to take a selfie. It made me wonder, though, in the age of smartphone cameras and Instagram, what is the purpose of viewing art in person, other than to prove that you actually saw the painting? Why not just stay home and look at a picture of the painting on Wikipedia?

I do not claim to be an expert art critic, nor an expert on photography, but it is nearly impossible for your iPhone’s tiny front-facing camera to really be able to represent the full range of colors and textures that constitute a painting. The resulting grainy image simply will not do the real painting justice. From an entirely cynical standpoint, the entire experience becomes less about actually appreciating the art and instead about feeding our own narcissism on social media. It is as if to say, “the Mona Lisa is beautiful, but so is my face, so I’ll take a picture of both.”

And I believe that is the true tragedy of this technological advance. I am very much a proponent of the adoption of new technology, but I believe there should be a limit to all selfies, as narcissism can certainly play a role in this drive to over-share. Yet, our interactions with art should not be defined by the number of likes we expect to get on an Instagram post. We should take more time to look at the art than the five seconds to take a selfie and then upload it to Facebook, Instagram or some other social media platform.

It is a common trope that our generation, the Millennials, is too self-absorbed and has attention spans too short to enjoy such work as art. I would be inclined to disagree with that trope. An enjoyable interaction with art does not have to be on the deepest philosophical level, and the value of that interaction should be defined by something actually meaningful to oneself. And, if a selfie is what a person finds most valuable about the interaction, then that represents a meaningful interaction. After all, not everyone is an art history major.

However, we must strike a balance between the seeming need to share with the world and the portion of an experience that should be kept private, although it is not nearly the “powerful story of self-obsessions” that a recent alarmist column in the Guardian would suggest. There is certainly a time and place for selfies, but we should take the time to read the little placard describing the art as well. The experience you draw from looking at a piece of art could potentially stay with you for the rest of your life, but your Snapchat story will be gone in 24 hours.

Nicholas Wu is a sophomore from Grosse Pointe Shores, Mich. He can be reached at nmwu@princeton.edu.