Interview: Artist Richard Phillips On Painting Celebrities, NYC's Art World & His Distinctly Evocative Paintings

That makes me think about social media and the internet, and the effect on the world of art and how people consume it. How do you feel it affects art?

I think it's an important communicative element that gets thrown into the mix. In a way, a lot of thought has been given to the fact that it kind of disembodies our experience, and that we're not connecting, but I sort of prefer to think the opposite way, where it actually heightens our experience. So in some ways it puts pressure on situations that are being constructed, even if it's in a temporary nature. Which in a weird way, in an interesting way, actually revitalizes the performance medium, in the sense that the ultimate temporary condition of performance art takes on a heightened characteristic because of this omnipresent, disembodied condition. So there's a new kind of vitality to it, and people are responding to that. I think those are some good things that can be taken out of it. It also kind of takes cover off a lot of different experiences associated with art. I mean museums are able to use it to put their archives online and it's so much easier to access their history, even how they put their their exhibitions together in quick succession. [Transfixed, 1996]