Back then, in some galleries, people would take the time to really appreciate the details, the effort, and the meaning behind an artwork. It wasn't just about aesthetics. Artists were speaking about something. It spoke about a time, it spoke about emotion, it spoke about experience.
Now it feels reversed.
A big reason for that shift is volume. Creating and publishing art has become extremely accessible. Anyone can produce work and put it out instantly. Because of that, the landscape is saturated and everything has become numbers, views, likes, engagement, reach.
The goal is no longer just to create something meaningful or aesthetic. The goal is to grab attention.
And in that shift, being an artist or designer has become more difficult. It used to feel like the focus was purely on design, purpose, and aesthetics. Now it feels like you also have to fight to be seen in the first place.
"Attention has become the currency."
And with attention spans getting shorter, people don't really sit with art the way they used to. There's always something next, something faster, something louder.
Short form content has made this even more extreme. The internet is constantly flooded, and everything competes in the same space. You only have a few seconds, sometimes even less, to decide if something is worth your attention.
So naturally, artists and creators are forced to adapt. They have to emphasize the strongest parts of their work immediately, even if that means compressing or reshaping what the work originally meant.
It becomes a strange contradiction.
Art used to be about expression first, sometimes even without needing immediate understanding or reaction. Now it feels like expression has to pass through attention first before anything else.