Since my dream of Vincent Van Gogh last week, I’ve been pondering what “true” artists from history would think of the online art marketing environment of 2009. What would they think of email, Facebook and Twitter?

I guess that depending on the artist the reaction could be anything from wonder and pure pleasure to shock, horror, and distaste. It’s hard not to imagine a look of disdain on Gauguin’s face as he contemplates our dizzy online art marketing world!

But Van Gogh? With such curiosity about life it’s hard to imagine that he would not have at least a passing interest. Then again, his intensity and power of focus seem truly at odds with the scattered sound bites of something like Twitter.

I like to think that he would see it both ways – eschewing the online world during his days painting in the fields and focusing relentlessly on his work – while at night perhaps engaging in a little high value social networking noise with fellow artists. After all, those late night salon get-togethers when he visited Paris were simply 19^th-Century social networking – right?

The bottom line for me is the quality of the interactions – whether they be online or offline. I’ve been on Twitter for a while now and I see lots of noisy self-promotion – but also some genuinely wonderful content. Yesterday, I saw this tweet from a fellow Twitterer, Brent Hodgson:

“What’s HOT: delivering real, genuine, valuable content — What’s NOT: pitch-pitch, repeat-repeat, spam-spam.”

I think that about sums it up. All our online-tools make good servants but poor masters. As artists it’s our responsibility to raise the bar and deliver “real, genuine, valuable content” no matter what the mode of communication.

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