Art management during the COVID-19 pandemic: visual arts creator perspective

Forced virtualisation and digitisation – such as the COVID-19 pandemic – significantly affect the quality of the creative process within the aesthetic situation, depending on the form of participation in visual arts. The visual arts creator, managing the creative process within the aes-thetic situation, must take into account the new optics concerning the components of the aesthetic situation because otherwise, his work will be incomprehensible or unattainable for the recipients – not due to the low quality of the artwork, but because the artwork in new virtualised cir-cumstances may change its features. The features of the aesthetic situation vary depending on the optics of the visual arts creator and the visual arts recipient. This paper focuses on the creator’s perspective. Management in the field of visual arts may have three dimensions: self-management, managing the aesthetic situation and managing a cultural institution. Each of these dimensions is characterised by different is-sues; however, they also have common denominators in the need to consider the metaphysical nature of the essence of the aesthetic situation. This work aims to analyse changes in the artistically creative process understood as the management of the aesthetic situation depending on the form in which participation in visual arts takes place: traditionally, i.e. in-person or virtually using digital methods. Literature analysis and empirical qualitative research in the form of interviews with visual arts creators did allow to answer the following research questions: 1) How do forced virtualisation and digitisation affect the quality of the creative process in an aesthetic situation regarding visual arts? 2) Which quali-tative parameters of the aesthetic situation are losing and which are gaining quality in connection with the virtualisation of the creative process in an aesthetic situation regarding visual arts? The presented results of empirical research show which of the components of the aesthetic situa-tion are subject to modifications due to the form of participation in visual arts.