Challenges in blogging about art?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by kimba on August 2, 2010 at 12:41pm

I use survey questions which I post under a category called "With Eyes Open" (the tagline of artist-at-large.com is "exploring culture with eyes open" so I've got a lock on that :) With the survey questions I try to mix it up, with the subjects of art and travel, as well as using observation skills and seeing, and ask them in a way where individual opinion is more important than historical or travel guide fact. For some surveys I have also added polls, thinking it would be easier to tick a box than write a comment.

I also invite people to share their experiences of visiting a place or work of art in the comments area, rather than just commenting (hey thanks for that or hey that's great) on what I have to say.

But even so, people seem to be reluctant to comment or tick a box. I'm not lacking in traffic, so I don't know what it is.

Maybe we could help each other out with comments?

Permalink Reply by Alexandra Korey on August 2, 2010 at 2:07pm

Hi Kimba, wonderful to meet you! I commented on 2 of your florence/tuscany posts and programmed your "favourite artwork in Florence" to come out on the Tuscany Arts fan page on August 17th at 4:10pm (i'm on holiday for 2 weeks so i have to plan entertainment for my fans, so thanks!).

Survey questions are a great idea, especially for a blog that has a lot of traffic like yours. I'm surprised you don't get more response.

I'm drinking in your posts about Tuscany, to start with what I know best, and will follow your RSS - thanks for contributing to "my region"! As for involving people about art, it's a hard job. It's made easier through travel (you should see the challenges I face writing for a pure arts magazine), but it's still hard to get people involved. SO i look forward to hearing what other people say about this. thanks!

Permalink Reply by kimba on August 2, 2010 at 2:17pm

Thanks Alexandra! Your contributions are so appreciated!

I'm going to look through your arttrav.com site a little later and see if there is anything I know enough about to comment on!

Permalink Reply by Roy Scarbrough on August 2, 2010 at 8:05pm

Great question.

Novelist Dan Brown seems to have engaged people in some "interesting" discussions. While Dan Brown is no Thomas Pynchon, I think there is a lesson here. Brown's Da Vinci Code gave people permission to engage in a bit of myth-making, gossipy conjecture and half truth, all in good fun. Da Vinci Code tours began to spring up in Paris and Milano. People love to gossip, and that can be the doorway to more serious conversations about art. Georgio Vasari's 16th Century "Lives of the Artists," is full of of "unreliable" dinner table gossip that no longer gets brought into conversations about art because formal art education is necessarily more empirical as an established academic discipline. Myth-making and story telling has a place, not that university art history professors should begin telling the story of Roso Rossi's baboon as fact.

The other day, I posted a speculative blog article on Simonetta Vespucci, who was a Medici mistress we all know as Botticelli's venus, as in "The Birth of Venues." I have to guess how much Sandro loved her. Call it a whisper campaign.

Permalink Reply by Roy Scarbrough on August 2, 2010 at 9:21pm

PS ... I can't really speak for how to engage people and traffic on a site. I'm here to learn more about that. Again, I'm just now getting started with blogging after a lot of traditional journalism over the years.

Hi, Kimba. It's good to see what you have accomplished with your site.

Permalink Reply by kimba on August 3, 2010 at 1:12pm

Thanks Roy :) It's been a long road - the site has been up for ten years. Always growing, always changing. It's only the last two years (since I seemed to be permanently unemployed) that I've been working on it full time.

Permalink Reply by Alexandra Korey on August 3, 2010 at 12:22am

that's a funny comparison, Roy (who is, for the record, one of my best "fans" on the Tuscany arts facebook page)... Every time I try to explain to people the REALITY or correct historical aspects upon which Dan Brown touches, their eyes glaze over.

I must check out your vespucci post, sounds like it'll match well with my Ognissanti post which is coming out soon.

Permalink Reply by kimba on August 3, 2010 at 2:48pm

Alexandra: Are you using su.pr and forwarding to twitter? You can get amazing numbers using this system.

Also, one thing that I noticed in your posts on Art in Tuscany is that you are posting a lot of descriptive posts, and exhibition announcement posts. Those two types of posts really don't get comments. I thought when I started posting exhibition announcements that people would write comments like "hey, I saw that exhibition and it was great/boring/sucked" but no one ever does. So I've come to the conclusion that those posts are never going to get comments. I have thought of adding the question "Have you seen this exhibition? What did you think?" at the bottom of those posts, but haven't yet done it.

Permalink Reply by Thomas Dowson on August 8, 2010 at 1:56pm

This is an issue I too have been grappling with. As I live in Normandy and I love French Impressionism I decided to start blogging about the various sites in Normandy that inspired Monet and the boys. I only started recently (an this year), and to be honest I am only just finding my voice.

One thing I have been opondering is how wide to stretch the net. Originally I was only going to do landscape/art type posts, bujt I soon realised to start picking up so,e traffic I was going to have to do a bit more than that. So I do include 'related' type posts - for example notices and reviews of exhibitions of French Impressionists abroad, book reviews,my latest qurkie little post about the stamp collection 'La Poste' has just released.

I just do not get coments - most of the ones I have are from friends I have cajoled. And for the exhibition notices and reviews I have even done as Kimba suggests, specifically asked people to add their coments if they have seen the exhibition .... I think I got one comment. Doing a very basic analysis of the search terms (which I appreciate can be a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy) it looks like my site is a site people are using for some basic information, such as how to get from Paris to Giverny.

My blog is still very young, and I am only just finding my feet, and seeing where any others have been treading already.

Permalink Reply by Roy Scarbrough on August 8, 2010 at 8:50pm

I'd love to see your niche work out for you. I think think the impressionist hook is a fine one. I love that body of work as well. It was an amazing time with unusually close bonds among these artists carving out a place for themselves and for the a public willing to see in new ways. I can't advise because I'm just getting started in blogging as well. I would say take advantage of your home base there and develop a strong sense of place that draws people's imaginations toward normandy.

Permalink Reply by Alexandra Korey on September 1, 2010 at 12:23pm

oh my gosh, i created a reaction!
Sorry, enthused by the rarity of the moment, I thought i'd share the excitement with my fellow struggling art bloggers. I wrote a post about some sculptures placed in the Tuscan landscape - I like them a lot, and assumed others did/would too. Wrong! Imagine my surprise when it generated STRONG negative feelings and actual comments on the blog, some from people I don't even know ;-)
Here's the post http://ow.ly/2xnDF
Riding the wave, i created a facebook poll to get those people not up to commenting involved; so far 5 votes on facebook about the sculptures.
In the hopes of keeping long-term readers I've answered each person's comment (especially the negative ones) and dialogued with them both in private and in public on facebook. I also contacted some of my facebook connections who I thought might be interested in order to encourage them to vote in the poll.

So these are some of my efforts to engage people about art - if only i could find something each week that people HATE ;-) !