In an age of artificial intelligence, instant visibility and the relentless circulation of images online, it is tempting to assume that every important artist will eventually be seen. Yet the history of art suggests the opposite: that true discovery depends not on access alone, but on patience, judgement and the rare ability to stop, look closely and recognise value before the world has learned to do so.
Text by Angie Afifi
When people talk about undiscovered geniuses, it is usually either a light nostalgia for a time when one could supposedly still “find” a genius in a studio on the outskirts, or a confident belief that this is no longer possible because the internet has made everything accessible. But if we set these extremes aside, the question becomes more precise and far more unsettling: is it possible today, in a world of endless image feeds, to simply fail to notice a truly strong artist, not to stop, not to look closely, to scroll past their work as easily as a random photograph. The answer, if we rely on history and on how contemporary attention is structured, turns out to be uncomfortably direct. Yes, it is possible. Moreover, it happens constantly.
The issue is not that talented people have disappeared or that the quality of art has declined. What has changed is the very mechanism of perception. We have stopped looking in the traditional sense of the word. The gaze has become fast, reactive, oriented toward recognition rather than understanding, and in this mode everything that requires time, effort, or inner tension ends up at the edge of visibility.
If we step away from our digital present and look at how artistic canons were formed in the past, it becomes clear that the “discovery” of an artist was never accidental. It was almost always a complex and prolonged process involving specific individuals who made decisions against the prevailing opinion. One of the most illustrative examples is Paul Durand-Ruel, who believed in the Impressionists at a time when their painting was considered worthless. At that time, their exhibitions caused scandal and misunderstanding, their work was sharply criticized and accused of bad taste, and the very nickname “Impressionists” emerged as a mockery. But Durand-Ruel went against the current. What is particularly important is that he did not simply buy Impressionist works, he systematically created a market for them, organized exhibitions, sought out buyers, endured losses, and maintained his position for years. A similar approach can be seen in Ambroise Vollard, who visited the studio of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) when he was still considered almost a failure, and bought his works without any guarantee of future recognition. Another key example is Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who supported Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Georges Braque (1882-1963) when their Cubism provoked confusion and even irritation. This clearly shows that what is often at stake is not “finding” but “constructing”, because these people actually created the conditions in which it became possible to learn about the very artists we still talk about today. There is also an important detail, they had time. They could look for a long time, doubt, return to the same work again and again, and gradually grasp its essence.
In the twentieth century, this logic became even more evident in the field of so called outsider art, where the very idea of artistic value was questioned. Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985), who first introduced the concept of art brut, deliberately sought out works by people outside the artistic system, patients of psychiatric clinics, prisoners, self-taught artists, those who had no access to academic education. His contemporaries often perceived this as something strange or even tasteless, but today these works are considered an important part of the artistic field. Later, Bruno Decharme (b.1951) continued this line, turning scattered discoveries into archives and collections accessible to researchers. And Sidney Janis (1896-1989) went even further and began exhibiting works by self-taught artists alongside those of recognized masters, thereby erasing the boundary between “professional” and “naive” art. All of these examples point to the same pattern. To discover an artist, it is not enough to notice them. One must be ready to question existing criteria and withstand the pressure of dominant taste. In the digital environment, this becomes more difficult, because any non-standard decision instantly dissolves in the vast stream of images, where attention is distributed not by depth but by speed of reaction.
This becomes especially clear when we turn to individual artistic destinies, where the question of whether a genius can be scrolled past takes on an almost literal meaning. Henry Darger (1892-1973) worked as a janitor during his lifetime and lived a reclusive life. After his death, an enormous archive of texts and illustrations was found in his room, a whole fictional world created without any expectation of an audience. At the same time, no one around him perceived him as an artist, his works remained unnoticed. Today, however, they are exhibited in museums and valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars. A similar story belongs to Séraphine Louis (1864-1942), a housekeeper who painted in her spare time. She was noticed by Wilhelm Uhde (1874-1947), who simply did not walk past one of her works. This moment is almost physically felt as a point of choice, one could have ignored it, and then no discovery would have taken place. There are also longer cases of oblivion. Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) was largely forgotten for two centuries until Théophile Thoré-Bürger (1807-1869) brought him back into the history of art. William Blake (1757-1827) was considered eccentric and incomprehensible during his lifetime, recognition came later. Particularly revealing is the case of Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), who created abstract works before the recognized founders of abstraction, but her art was understood only decades later. All of these stories show that one can scroll past not only a single work, but an entire era.
Returning to the present, there is a temptation to say that today everything is different, because access to art has become almost unlimited. But this is precisely where the main paradox lies. It has become easier for an artist to show their work, but much harder to be noticed. The flow of images is so vast that attention ceases to be natural and becomes a managed resource. Algorithms offer us what already resonates, reinforce the familiar, repeat the recognizable, and in this system the new is at a disadvantage. It requires effort, while the system is designed to minimize effort. As a result, the most interesting, complex, or simply unfamiliar works may remain outside the main field of visibility, not because they are hidden, but because they are not supported by the logic of attention distribution.
Nevertheless, the mechanisms of discovery have not disappeared, they have simply changed and become less visible. One of the most persistent is the situation in which artists find other artists. Pablo Picasso once paid attention to African sculpture, which strongly influenced his language. Paul Klee (1879-1940) collected children’s drawings and works by people outside the academic environment, seeing in them a spontaneity that professional art often loses. Today, this role is partly performed by small professional and semi professional communities on the internet, where artists and curators share discoveries, sometimes bringing to light names that algorithms ignore. There are also other channels, for example those connected with the medical and social sphere. Hans Prinzhorn (1886-1933) in the early twentieth century collected drawings by patients and perceived them as art. In contemporary practice, a similar role is sometimes played by art therapists and social workers, who become the first viewers for authors outside the institutional system. Finally, there is an important layer of private collecting, where people without strategies or ambitions buy works simply because they are interested. Such collectors often make mistakes, but it is precisely among these mistakes that genuine discoveries sometimes emerge.
In the end, the question of whether a genius can be scrolled past ceases to be abstract and becomes almost everyday. Yes, it can, and it happens constantly, because attention has become a limited resource, and the surrounding system is structured so that we look faster and faster. But this does not mean that the situation is hopeless. The ability not to scroll past, to stop in front of a work that initially seems strange or incomprehensible, is not an innate gift but a skill. It requires time, patience, and a willingness to doubt one’s first impression. As the history of art shows, it is precisely such moments of sustained attention and careful contemplation that lead to the most important discoveries.
