My personal favorite art channels on the YouTube
wherein the writer talks YouTube content creators
I have very specific tastes when it comes to YouTube content1. When it comes to art content, I like YouTube channels that create thoughtful essays about art, artists, or art history. High production quality is a bonus, but not a necessity. Honestly, I miss the more amateur days of YouTube2. What really matters to me is if the content is delivered in an interesting and engaging manner that demonstrates the creator’s passion and effort3.
With that preamble aside, what follows is a list of twenty(-ish) YouTube channels about art that I really love and regularly look forward to enjoying new content. I did have one important criterion for inclusion on this list (beyond the criteria that it had to be about art and it had to be something I regularly enjoyed): either the subscriber count or the typical video views count had to be <1 million.
Why?
But I also wanted my list to reflect the fact that I really do look for what I consider to be unique and fun things. And my criterion of exclusion bore this out: I only had to eliminate one channel (sorry, North of the Border; I also left James Gurney out because, I mean, who doesn’t know about James Gurney’s ridiculously longevous presence on the Internet?4). A few of the channels below do have >1 million subscribers, but their typical viewer count per video hovers around half that.
With one exception. Which, when I get to it, I’ll explain.
So, here is the entire list. I’m not for sure how many entries this will be, but what I want to do is give a short description of each channel (my description, not theirs); briefly explain what I find so compelling about their channel; and conclude with an embedded link to one of their videos that I really enjoy.
Given the current word count, I’m going to wrap up this post, but not without talking about at least one of these channels. I’ve listed them in a casual alphabetical order, but I’ll feature them randomly5.
Blind Dweller
It doesn't get much weirder than this, and that's why I love it. This channel features wonderfully bizarre art, but it does more than just dwell on shock value or the macabre. Rather, the creator does an excellent job of discussing art and artists in context (both historical and interpretable), and in terms of technique and style.
In addition to the thoughtfulness and high content standards that Blind Dweller puts into every video, I really look forward to learning about artists who are unknown to me. I started following Blind Dweller initially because of one of his videos on Goya, but quickly learned to value his content as an entry point into the lives and works of so many artists I'd never heard of. And he does it with such aplomb and eloquence that no matter the subject matter, I'm drawn in and thoroughly enjoy his entire presentation.
to be continued. . .
That’s not fair. I have very specific taste all around.
Stephen Moore of Trend Mill hit the nail on the head for me in his article The Internet has made me too cynical:
These days, people make content and produce products and services, and whatever, purely to capitalize on Internet trends or to make hay from hype bubbles, and it's so soulless. Why aren't we creating out of passion anymore? Why is everything to be monetized, gamed, hacked, and designed for engagement? What happened to people just making stuff for fun? Or to be helpful? It makes me long for those glorious early days of YouTube.
As do I.
Even the subject matter is not necessarily necessary. For a (admittedly tangential) example, one of the most engaging books I’ve read was about the discovery of how to calculate longitude. . . I mean, there is nothing about that topic that jumps out to me as anything but a printing error.
I mean, come on, It’s James [EXPLICTIVE] Gurney. Dude’s a legend.
If you’re wondering, this was done using the =RAND() function in excel in tandem with =SORT.