Rowan Derryth of Prim Perfect has a very interesting and wide-ranging post about the state of metaverse art, partly inspired by the UWA 3D Art Challenge, a recent showcase of numerous SL artists. She compares that to the state of the real world art business (which is indeed a business), and makes this striking point:

The only artists I know who are actually self-supporting in SL are those who have commercial sides to their businesses, or those who have external funding for their work. And here lies one of the key problems in giving credibility to virtual art: what market there is for it is unstable at best. Because the sad truth is, to quote a Jenny Holzer Truism, ‘Money creates taste.’ Or rather, perhaps, it drives it.

If I'm reading her right, she's suggesting that SL art must be more commoditized for the wider art world to recognize it. And to be more commoditized, it must be connected to physical objects that can exist outside SL (where art can be bought and sold, but is only valuable to other SLers.) I think that's a fair point. Internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Cao Fei did get quite a bit of broader recognition for her SL art projects, and even sold one for a lot of money. However, much of her SL work was translated into the material world, and contained a lot of physical items (books, magazines, prints sculptures, DVDs, etc.) that could be acquired as physical objects by collectors. Doing this, I believe, helped the mainstream art world get a handle on her virtual art -- and provide something for art buyers to purchase. I'd like to see more SL artists experiment with commoditizing their virtual works in this way too. I think it'll likely lead to more recognition, and maybe just as important, more funding.

Image credit: PJ Trenton via Prim Perfect.