The History of Art Collecting and its Modern State

What is art?

The answer to this will be unique to each person asked, along with various examples that can actually define its personality, including his set of ideas, opinions and even believes. But when it comes to items such as art collections, it seems to get a little brighter.

The task of art collecting isn’t something new. Throughout history we can find various collections, usually empowered and told by their owner’s logs and stories. The first art came, of course, in the form of cave paintings. Cave paintings can’t really be tracked forward as a collection, but as one can imagine, some caves had better artists than others - In terms of quality and quantity. However, this art usually belonged to tribes rather than individuals, so the term of art collector (At least in his modern meaning) only started more recently.

Another example of wall paintings can be told as the Egyptian hieroglyphs, that may have still been used as static art (In terms of location), but were mainly featured in pyramids and temples, resulting in a collection that was dedicated to the higher society - Kings, prophets, priests etc. - Sometimes even as an after-death collection.

Similar to the after-death collection of ancient Egyptians,the ancient Chinese and the Terracotta army featured many sculptures and artifacts in the honor of the great Chinese Emperor - This is yet another art collection meant for the afterlife, even serving as a loyal army that swore to protect their leader - Forever.

But as the years passed, the means of creating art has drastically improved, both in terms of quality, quantity and ideas. As history tells us, the prime growth in the matter already started with the Greek, Persian and Roman empires, each with unique artists and concepts. One thing remained constant, art was still primarily for the kings, Caesars, leaders and the rich..

As we go on to the dark and medieval ages, art became an even wider concept, with some of the most well-known artists, who started to get more credit and acknowledgment through the pages of history. When the Renaissance came to life, the role and luxury of the artist became closer to what we know today. They also got more liberty than most artists in the past periods, who mainly served under the throne (Or the big players at the time).

See, Feel… Get Inspired!

Art collections became more widely available to common people with the introduction of museums, starting around 280 BC., Museums as we know them today have been around the 19th century. As the industrial revolution began to strike, art could’ve been distributed around many, with the original art gaining even a better status than before. As more people could have the opportunity to gain profit, the hobby of art collecting became appealing to a broader audience/ who usually couldn’t see a piece of art, suddenly became owners of various collections.
As the years go by, we get to our modern age, where the forms of art have advanced greatly and don’t only include things such as drawings and statues. The term itself contains more data and ideas than ever before, and it seems we’re just at the verge. The mass appeal of art caused the creation of many services and platforms serving this specific audience - Allowing better management, insurance options, buying/selling, defining authentic art, security and more.

One of the newest and most interesting concepts comes to mind is Portion, a blockchain based service that allows art collectors to expand their art collection with various unique designs. Artists will be able to create unique pieces of authentic digital art, because of the blockchain tech. All of those collections will be hosted on the platform, and will feature an advanced security and management technology that’ll take the field to the next level.

Advances and revolutions in the art space usually leads to exciting outcomes, and there’s no reason why this one won’t take us even higher. Things can get interesting, and we can only wait to hear more details about it.

Portion’s Official Website: https://portion.io
Portion’s Official Telegram Group: https://t.me/PortionOfficial
Portion’s Official Telegram Channel: https://t.me/PortionChannel
Portion’s Official Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Portion.io
Portion’s Official Twitter: https://twitter.com/PortionApp
Portion’s Official Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/portion.io