ESSAY: The Zeitgeist of Instagram

Why does looking at these little squares of art, one after another, provide such satisfaction?

by

I’ve always loved a good ghost story. But Hegel gave us the best ghost of all – the Zeitgeist. My art theory professor joked that the Zeitgeist, like so many other spectres, was observable only by house cats. To us students, though, the spirit of the age – that invisible agent embodying the characteristics of a particular time and place – could be seen within great works of art. 

Of course, Hegel’s idea pertained not to actual ghosts but to the links between art and the wider culture. But I’d invariably imagine an independent entity – a luminous and amorphous shapeshifter that hovered above the press of bodies in one of Wolfgang Tillmans’ nightclub photographs, or flitted, like a demonic dragonfly, across a Matthew Barney video. There it is! Oh, it’s gone! Did you see it? (It was the ’90s, so Tillmans and Barney were bishop and pope). I know better now. 

Institutional art doesn’t own the Zeitgeist. She lives outside the gallery system, too. In 2015, I spotted her on Instagram, looking out at me from behind the ice blue ‘wolf-eye’ contacts worn by rapper Kanye West. She possessed him fully. A chill ran up my spine. 

It’s easy to resent Instagram. As countless articles have pointed out, it’s an addictive tyrant devoted to self-mythology. For all the ways it has busted open a cloistered art world, it also has become a despot of narcissistic self-promotion. But in 2018, a Vulture article declared artists have little choice but to sign up. “Instagram,” it said, “has reached the level of infrastructure.” 

So I scroll. I scroll because it grants access to artists from faraway places. Even before the pandemic, it was unlikely I’d ever see – in person – the work of @charlesartjerry, a Haitian folk artist. Though the screen diminishes the art’s emanations, it can at least approximate some small part of the in-person experience. Many galleries are closed these days, anyway. Beggars can’t be choosers. 

I scroll because I like how the platform collapses the illusory boundaries between art and life. Just now on my feed: a chair design by Britain’s Faye Toogood, my friend’s daughter’s grad dress, an epic painting by American artist Dana Schutz, some chicken wings recently eaten by Snoop Dogg, a freedom quilt from the collection of the American Folk Art Museum in New York City. I scroll because Instagram levels the playing field, showing us art that’s happening outside the gallery and off the walls (like @heidelbergproj, a Detroit non-profit that improves communities through art).

But above all, I scroll because I need to. I’m restless. I’m looking for something. Instagram condenses my existential searches to one place; all the diamonds in all the rough are right in the palm of my hand. My favourite Tracey Emin work is a neon sign that says, simply: “Move Me.” I can hear her famously bratty British accent every time I read it – part demand, part plea. Emin’s work often conveys a kind of hunger – intellectual, spiritual, emotional, sexual – that’s never fully sated. 

Scrolling is fast until it is slow. I hurry past a few memes, several sneaker ads, then pause on @tess_michalik, a NYC painter. The rich physicality of her oil-painted flowers – even via screen – is so super-charged, their prettiness so viscous, that every nostalgia-receptor in my amygdala starts to ache. They are the floral patterns on my great-grandmother’s bed linens, they are her wallpaper in 3D, they are the sugary rosettes and goopy blue icing on store-bought birthday cakes.

I stop on a post by @slo_toons. It’s a painting of a bag of Hostess Hickory Sticks Original, of all things! Slo_toons’ cartoon paintings, on cut-out plywood, have a ‘low art’ vibe, and after a glut of posts depicting art laden with philosophical signifiers, this happy snack feels unfettered, even irreverent. (“The unexamined life is not worth living,” said Socrates. “Yeah, but what if the examined life is a clunker?” quipped Vonnegut). 

Every day I look at @davidshrigley, a British artist. Today’s painting is a pink egg with legs (a legged egg? a leggy eggy?) riding on the back of a green deer. The word ‘taxi’ is printed in the upper left corner. The absurdity of the situation pokes me in the cerebral cortex. It’s a playful provocation, the bold colour like a caffeine jolt. It’s important not to overthink Shrigley’s work. British satirist Will Self wrote that for Shrigley, “consciousness can never be explained; it is always deranged.” 

Why does looking at these little squares of art, one after another after another, provide such moments of satisfaction? Sure, art is a marvel in its own right. But scrolling through 20 or 30 images on Instagram, reflexively stopping at maybe 10 or 12, is like walking through a group exhibition curated to meet the specific requirements of my own psyche. Help me. Comfort me. Challenge me. Delight me. Move me!

The psyche has mood swings. Sometimes, it needs the hard edge of cynicism. Sometimes, it needs something softer, like reminiscence. But nostalgia is tricky. It forgets the failings of the past, but on the other hand, lets us feel like we’ve already lived, and survived, entire eras. I pause in my scrolling for an @nytimes headline: “67 Children in Gaza and 2 Children in Israel Were Killed in This Month's Conflict. This is Who They Were." I read a friend’s anguished post: “My autistic son is suffering under COVID-isolation rules.” 

So, I revel in the sweetness of @tess_michalik flowers, in the innocence of @slo_toons’ characters. It is easier to take comfort in the familiar, easier to yearn irrationally for a fictional past, than to make sense of the wreckage that is right now. 

Absurdity is less complex. @davidshrigley resets the mind, clears cloudy thinking. After a dose or two, I feel refreshed, even focused. Somehow, absurdity feels more honest than nostalgia. The zanier the post, the stronger the acknowledgement of the nonsensical nature of modern life. We live in a maze of non-facts, alternative facts, fake facts. 

Barring photos of Kanye, I may never spot the Zeitgeist again, at least the whole of her. Remember when she was easily found? My art history textbooks told me she lived, for the early decades of the 20th century, right inside the O-shaped mouth of Edvard Munch’s The Scream – that great human howl. In the 1950s though, German sociologist Karl Mannheim argued it was two opposing Zeitgeists that defined a period, not one. Imagine – a luminous phantasm clashing swords with a hissing wraith, culture a series of legendary battles depicted on collectible holograms – nimbuses slashed, wings torn to shreds. 

And now? Zeitgeist has divided herself into smithereens of smithereens of smithereens. We live in a post-truth world, after all. There’s one of her for every subjectivity, for every possible intersection of race, class, gender, religion and disability, and for every artist’s ‘reconceptualized’ lens.

The Zeitgeist now is dispersed mercury, the havoc when someone drops a thermometer and hundreds of tiny silver beads go speeding across the floor. Silvery flashes of the Zeitgeist appear on Instagram – the place that gathers all the art in the world and sends it spiralling down a never-ending feed of little square images. Sometimes 20 or 30 geists oppose one another in a single scrolling session – Instagram is a visual and ideological hullabaloo. But if the Zeitgeist is everywhere, is she anywhere? My psyche feasts but soon is hungry again, as her spirit is so diluted. Some days, Instagram is boring, and I can’t see her at all.

And yet, there’s @tuile_fionnuala, an 11-year-old Ontario ceramacist who makes the most joyous, beastly, blinged-out vessels I’ve ever seen. There’s Calgary artist @marigoldasantos, who paints, draws and tattoos in eerie ink, surreal ink, seductive ink, graceful ink. My psyche is simultaneously soothed and stimulated. There’s @m_d_n_f_ – the account of Winnipeg artists Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber. They post every morning, usually around the time I’m pouring my second cup of coffee. For years now, I’ve been absorbing their work. Their wordplay and witticisms have helped me look at the world with more humour, more wry sympathy. You are what you eat, right? 

It’s important to look up from the screen sometimes, towards the horizon. It’s necessary too, to close your eyes, and see what’s there – innately, foundationally – that hasn’t yet been swayed or influenced by this legion of square images. Some folks – my favourite kind of people – have an irrepressible urge to make, but also to witness and be changed by other acts of creation. Artists must communicate, must share. C’mon, Instagram. Show me something profound. Move me. Excite me. Make me laugh. Fray my nerves. Cut me to the quick. Haunt me. Please? ■  

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