Your Gateway Drug to Art

"Don't forget. There was a time when the piano was avant garde technology." -- Jorge Colombo, artist

You're coffee hunting, and you brush past a man on the sidewalk and think he's a tourist based on the way he's standing there looking at his phone. But he's no tourist. He's NYC artist Jorge Colombo and he's painting -- on his iPhone -- what may well be the next New Yorker cover (he's done several).

Colombo's one of many artists working with 20x200, the online gallery thats seeks to make art available to everyone. Founded by techie and offline gallery-owner Jen Bekman, 20x200 aims (and succeeds) at solving three core issues with traditional galleries: art buying intimidates, galleries have limited reach (and limited inventory), and artists are still "starving." Being online Bekman can work with hundreds of artists at a time, offer new distribution, and the limited edition prints make art accessible to newbie collectors.

Colombo is emblematic of this new art/commerce platform. He paints with Apple products for one, and agrees that the concept of galleries and art buying needed to evolve. He notes, speaking fondly of what his new outlet does for art consumers: "buying an expensive original piece of art is akin to hiring a musician to come to your house to play you a song."

Now go forth (and procure a print).