Artsy

On this episode, we take stock of the state of the art market. May was a frenzied month for the industry, with the Rockefeller and New York auctions providing key litmus tests about the health of the market. There were some objectively massive sales, including works by Picasso and Modigliani. But with big ticket works selling, why didn’t the action on the salesroom floor feel exciting? And what does that tell us about the role that expectations play when it comes to the art market? We also get a firsthand account of the sale that did electrify the art world: the $21.1 million auction of Kerry James Marshall’s Past Times at Sotheby’s. Finally, we look ahead to Art Basel in Basel, which opens to VIPs on June 12th.

This week, our editors sit down to chat about one of the art world’s most divisive topics: “selfie museums.” We discuss what the rise of the Museum of Ice Cream, and other similar Instagram-friendly institutions, means for the art world and the meaning of the word “museum.” As experiential art continues to explode in popularity, we also discuss whether selfie-driven art is different or similar to selfie museums—even drawing on our own recent experiences visiting one of these Instagram-friendly spaces.

The United States House of Representatives is considering expanding the Bank Secrecy Act in order to make galleries and auction houses subject to federal regulation. And the entire art market is buzzing. But the rules of the art market aren’t always written by the government. Last month, the Art Business Conference hosted a panel discussion on Art Basel’s “Art Market Principles and Best Practices,” a set of internal regulations governing the conduct of galleries participating in the fair This week, we bring you audio of that panel, along with a brief introduction. The discussion was moderated by Artsy Executive Editor Alexander Forbes and featured art advisor Elizabeth Szancer, gallerist Stefania Bortolami, and art lawyer Jo Backer Laird.

For most of us, the following scenarios probably sound familiar: you’re supposed to be focusing on an important task, but instead you’re distracted by Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook; or, you’re in a museum full of art but still find yourself glued to your iPhone. This week on the Artsy Podcast, we tackle the question of how creativity and the arts are being impacted by the digital age. On one hand, we’re constantly fending off distraction; on the other, the internet has created amazing new tools for viewing art and helping artists get their work funded.

On this week’s episode, we walk you through an alternative Art History 101 class—one where no question is too embarrassing or obvious to ask. Join us as we demystify some of the art world’s most hard-to-decipher movements (such as Conceptual Art) and dive into the nuances behind seemingly straightforward topics (like the proper way to hang an artwork).

Nearly three months into 2018, several major milestones of the art market calendar have already come and gone—including the London auctions and the release of the The Art Market | 2018 report earlier this month. Meanwhile, in China, Art Basel in Hong Kong kicked off this week. On this episode, our editors sit down to talk about what early art market signals this year are telling us about the health of the trade and what it could all mean for the future of the industry.

On this episode, we’re taking a deep dive into the world of contemporary Cuban art—a topic int with questions of history and politics and culture, both on and off the island. We’re joined from Miami by art collector Jorge Pérez and chief curator of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Tobias Ostrander, to discuss the institution’s show “On the Horizon” featuring more than 170 works of art.

Picture a cake: It’s circular, maybe rectangular, covered in a layer of single-color frosting. With the help of so-called “cake artists," however, this classic dessert is increasingly breaking the mold. On this episode, we explore the delectable, jaw-dropping world of specialty cakes. From a life-size bust of Willie Nelson to a geometric mousse confection that resembles nothing so much as a work of Op Art, these creations are increasingly sculptural. Plus, we’ll revisit the Supreme Court case that hinges on the question: Can a cake be a work of art?

The official portraits of former United States President Barack Obama, painted by Kehinde Wiley, and former First Lady Michelle Obama, by Amy Sherald, were presented at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. earlier this month. Upon unveiling, the portraits became two of the most widely-debated works of contemporary art in years. On this episode, we sat down with curator Eugenie Tsai and writer Antwaun Sargent to discuss the impact and legacy of these two historic portraits.

“Songs for Sabotage”—the fourth iteration of the New Museum Triennial—opened last week in New York. On this episode, we sat down with exhibition co-curator Gary Carrion-Murayari to discuss the years-long process to assemble a show of this nature. How did they decide which artists define the international cutting edge?

Almost everything can be “curated” these days—playlists, outfits, gift baskets, even salads. So what does it really mean to be an independent curator? On this episode, we’re joined by curator Jacqueline Mabey to discuss the ups and downs of a career that’s not tied to a single institution.

On today’s episode, we’re taking a deep dive into two questions at the intersection of art and law. First: Can we make a case for legally eating an artwork? And, second: How can a Houston resident own a wall in her home—but not the mural painted on it?

Artist Judy Chicago began teaching at Fresno State in 1970, where she founded the nation’s first known feminist art program. On today’s episode, we explore the story of the women artists enrolled in the radical class—and how this little-known project evolved into the now-iconic installation Womanhouse at CalArts in 1972.

In 1936, Dorothea Lange took a photograph that would go on to become one of the most defining images of the Great Depression: Migrant Mother. On this episode, we explore the backstory of this iconic photo—including the fact that it was almost never taken. Plus, what can Migrant Mother tell us about modern-day photojournalism?

Does smoking pot make you more creative? On this episode, we posed the question to Aaron Lammer—musician and host of the Stoner podcast—in a conversation that ranges from the neuroscience of drug use to the habits of musicians, authors, and artists who incorporate marijuana into their practice.

On this episode, we look ahead to 2018. From continuing allegations of sexual harassment to the Met’s new ticketing policy to a wealth of upcoming women-centric shows, these are the issues and exhibitions we’ll be keeping an eye on in the new year.

You can find the Artsy Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, or the podcasting app of your choice. Don’t forget to rate the show and leave us comments; we’d love to hear from you. Over the last few weeks, we’ve translated a few of our readers’ favorite art-historical stories into audio. On our final special episode: the life of sculptor Camille Claudel, whose career was intertwined—for better or worse—with that icon of 20th-century art, Auguste Rodin.

You can find the Artsy Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, or the podcasting app of your choice. Don’t forget to rate the show and leave us comments; we’d love to hear from you. This month on the Artsy Podcast, we’re translating four of our readers’ favorite art-historical stories into audio. On this episode: the dramatic story behind Jackson Pollock’s largest painting, why it’s undoubtedly exaggerated—and why that doesn’t diminished its significance in the famed Abstract Expressionist’s oeuvre.

This month on the Artsy Podcast, we’re translating four of our readers’ favorite art-historical stories into audio. On this episode: when Georgia O’Keeffe traded desert vistas and bleached cow bones for the verdant valleys and electric blue seas of Hawaii.

This month on the Artsy Podcast, we’re translating four of our readers’ favorite art-historical stories into audio. On this episode: how a young Robert Rauschenberg roped the admired Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning into his quest to make a drawing using only an eraser.

Art Basel in Miami Beach—the last major event on this year’s art world calendar—opened its doors to collectors yesterday. On this episode, we discuss our favorite booths of the week and what a new layout means for the fair’s 16th edition. Plus, we ask: A year after the U.S. presidential election, how is today’s political climate reflected in the art on view in Miami?

In 2012, the median income of professional artists with art degrees in New York City was $25,000. In 2015, the chance that an artist living in the U.S. would receive a solo exhibition at MoMA was 0.0006%. The odds are stacked against artists trying to make it in the art world. On this episode, we’re joined by Heather Bhandari—co-author of the book Art/Work, a professional practices guide—to discuss the growing number of resources for artists looking to establish and run a successful practice.

Craigslist has proven to be a blessing for a generation of artists, a seemingly bottomless well of eccentricity. Artists have used it to cast projects, as a source for serial photography books, even as a way to sell sculptural works masquerading as used furniture. On this episode, we’re joined by artist Sophie Barbasch, who has used the site to pose often intimate questions to a sea of strangers.

Last month, the New York Times published a story detailing a number of sexual harassment allegations leveled against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. But that article was only the beginning. In the weeks since, at least 20 high-profile men have faced accusations of sexual misconduct, including two powerful figures in the art world: former Artforum co-publisher Knight Landesman and former Armory Show director Benjamin Genocchio. On today’s episode, a discussion of these sexual allegations—what gave rise to them, and what should change.

Last month, Second Lady Karen Pence outlined her three-part plan to promote the field of art therapy during her term in the White House. But what is art therapy, exactly? On this episode, we break down this little-understood field—and discuss whether support from a controversial administration may end up politicizing it.

“I love family photos, but not in the way most people love them. My love for them is like my love for reality TV.” That’s how artist Petra Collins begins her latest book Coming of Age, which hit shelves earlier this week. On this episode, we’re joined by Collins and fellow artist Marilyn Minter to discuss both family snapshots and reality television—plus, feminism, horror flicks, and what fashion photography can do that art can’t.

Who decides how much an artwork is worth? And is that price tag rational? On this episode, we’re joined by economist Don Thompson, whose latest book The Orange Balloon Dog explores the inner workings of the contemporary art market. From Jeff Koons’s monumental sculpture that set auction records in 2013 to the upcoming sale of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, we discuss how the massive sums paid for artworks are determined across auction houses, art fairs, and private deals.

This week, we’re rebroadcasting a favorite episode from earlier this year. As the New York Times recently reported, twenty-somethings pursuing a career in art and design are the most likely to receive financial assistance from parents; they also receive the largest sums. On this episode, we’re joined by Sandra Jackson-Dumont, chair of education at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Naiomy Guerrero, creator of GalleryGirl.nyc, to discuss the role money plays in art world careers. How does the plethora of unpaid internships and low-paying jobs limit inclusivity? And what steps can we take to change the system?

On September 20th, the New York Times published a preview of the Guggenheim’s latest show “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World.” One particular video work—Peng Yu and Sun Yuan’s Dogs That Cannot Touch Each Other (2003), in which pit bulls bred for dogfighting were restrained and placed opposite each other on treadmills—quickly ignited a firestorm of controversy. On September 25th, the museum announced that it would pull the piece (along with two others that incorporated animals) from the exhibition. On Tuesday, Artsy sat down with show curators Alexandra Munroe and Philip Tinari to discuss the Guggenheim’s response, the artists’ reactions, and what these events will mean for museums going forward.

Last month, Artsy spoke with two curators of the Guggenheim ’s latest exhibition, “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World” about a particular moment in the history of contemporary artists from China. Our conversation took place before the show had opened—and, as it turned out, a few days before a major controversy erupted around Peng Yu and Sun Yuan’s 2003 video work Dogs That Cannot Touch Each Other. This work, along with two others, was eventually removed amid allegations of animal cruelty. Part One of this two-part episode features the original recording, in which we discuss the rising tide of globalization between 1989 and 2008 and its impact on both China and its art. Part Two was recorded on Tuesday and explores the controversy and the works that incited it.

London’s Frieze Week is here. On this episode, Artsy’s editors report back from the 2017 editions of Frieze London and Frieze Masters. Why are these two fairs are beginning to look more and more alike? Plus, this year’s best booths and how a blockbuster show at the Tate is influencing the art on view.

There are certain artworks that almost everyone in the world knows—the Mona Lisa, Starry Night, The Scream. What most people can’t explain is the reason why these particular paintings are more famous than thousands of other inventive and moving works of art that fill museums worldwide. On this special 50th episode, we chart one painting’s rise to fame: The Night Watch (1642), Rembrandt van Rijn’s 17th-century masterwork. It's a centuries-long story that includes, among other things: a devastating bankruptcy, slanderous rumors, a swift rise to fame, and, at one point, Rembrandt’s iconic canvas slashed into ribbons. To help us answer this question, we enlisted the help of a slew of experts: Rijksmuseum curator Pieter Roelofs, author Derek Thompson, Queen’s University professor Stephanie Dickey, executive vice president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Mariët Westermann, and artist Stefan Kasper.

Fifteen years ago, there were a handful of international art fairs; today, that number has risen past 250. On this episode, we’re joined by The Armory Show’s director, Benjamin Genocchio, to discuss how this increasingly influential facet of the art world should evolve. Can directors make their fairs more equitable for smaller galleries—and is that even their responsibility?

Art and finance have long been intertwined. As early as the Italian Renaissance, a Florentine banking family supported Michelangelo and Botticelli in making their masterpieces. On this episode, we fast-forward a few centuries to 1980s New York City as Jeffrey Deitch explains how he convinced both bankers and art world denizens to buy into Citibank’s new art services department—an innovation that would transform the art market into what we know today.

From Harvard to Penn State, medical schools across the country are increasingly turning to art and the humanities to train would-be doctors. On this episode, we’re joined by Columbia University’s Dr. Delphine Taylor to discuss how life-drawing classes or visits to the Met help her students tackle ambiguity and humanize their patients.

Last month, a new row broke out in the art world around the Berkshire Museum’s decision to auction off 40 works by artists such as Norman Rockwell and Alexander Calder to pay for a renovation and boost their endowment. But this latest controversy represents just one installment in the long-running debate about “deaccessioning,” or the disposal of objects from a museum’s collection. On this episode, we’re joined by law professor Brian L. Frye who walks us through the history of the regulations surrounding deaccessioning and how it became the hot-button issue it is today.

This week, we’re rebroadcasting a favorite episode from earlier this year. GIPHY’s community curator Ari Spool joins us to break down the process of curating artist-created GIFs. Is there a key to going viral? What do GIFs allow us to express that words might not? And how do these online images fit into centuries of fine art? Read more: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-giphy-artists-works-viewed-100-million-times

Visitors to this year’s Venice Biennale can stroll through the Pavilion of Shamans—just one example of the increasing presence of shamanism and mysticism in the work of contemporary artists. This uptick comes amid a reexamination of ideas that were once associated with the countercultural movements of the 1960s and ’70s, including a second look at psychedelics. On this episode, we explore the wider history of shamanic practices across the globe—and how they’ve intersected with the art world throughout the decades.

On this episode, curators Jessica Cerasi and Kyung An walk us through the ABCs of contemporary art. Each chapter of their new book, Who’s Afraid of Contemporary Art?, is devoted to a different question about this thorny (and often alienating) segment of the art world. When did contemporary art start—and when will it end? Why was the art world split over Jay-Z’s show at Pace Gallery? And why are exhibition press releases so hard to understand?

Who built the New York art world? Today, the scene is by and large dominated by men. But some of the most prestigious museums, galleries, and salons that fostered the city’s cultural scene in the 1920s and ’30s were founded by women like Peggy Guggenheim and Florine Stettheimer. In this episode, we explore their often-overlooked stories—and discuss why, despite their beginnings, these institutions have long been criticized for a gender gap across both their staffs and collections.

On February 4th, the New York Times published a front page story entitled “Is the Met Museum ‘a Great Institution in Decline’?” The article ignited a ferocious public backlash against New York City’s most-visited institution and its director and CEO, Thomas P. Campbell. By the end of that same month, Campbell had announced his resignation—making his tenure as director the shortest since the Met’s fourth, Herbert Eustis Winlock, who presided over the institution from 1932 to 1939. Principal among the issues that led to Campbell’s resignation was a roughly $10 million budgetary deficit (public knowledge for a year or so prior to his resignation), which officials warned could swell to $40 million if immediate action was not taken. In a conversation with Artsy, days after his July 14th departure from the Met, Campbell was candid about the issues that contributed to that deficit—including his own ambition as director. But he also painted a far more nuanced picture of the circumstances surrounding the major grievances levied against him and the museum: in particular, heavy investment in expanding the museum’s activities in modern and contemporary art and extensive resources put into digital infrastructure to help expand the reach of the United States’s largest museum.

In May, documents leaked to the Guardian offered an unprecedented glimpse into Facebook’s inner workings: How do they think about moderating a range of controversial subjects, from violence to pornography? But those in the art world were particularly interested in the handful of slides detailing the social media giant’s policy on nudity in works of art. Facebook and Instagram have long been criticized for removing artwork containing nudity, a practice many interpret as censorship. On this episode, we dive into social media’s new role as the gatekeeper of what we see—and why fixing this system may prove to be impossible.

The saga of Egon Schiele’s Portrait of Wally spans six decades, beginning in 1950s Vienna before making its way to New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Minimalist painter Carmen Herrera sold her first artwork at age 89. Now, at age 102, her paintings fetch prices in the six digits. On today’s episode, we explore the growing demand for—and institutional presence of—long-overlooked women artists including Herrera, Carol Rama, and Irma Blank. How did these older, female artists push young men out of the art world spotlight?

Is it illegal to kill the president in an artwork? That’s what we wondered in May, when we saw first saw Alaskan assistant professor Thomas Chung’s painting that depicted actor Chris Evans holding Donald Trump’s severed head. And over the past few weeks, that question has taken on renewed significance with a series of creative works imagining Trump’s demise from a Kathy Griffin photoshoot to a performance of Julius Caesar by New York’s Public Theater. On this episode, we’re joined by New York University law professor Amy Adler to break down the limits of free speech in art—and answer one of Donald Trump Jr.’s tweets in the process.

At this year’s edition of Art Basel in Basel, which opened Tuesday to VVIPs, dealers were reporting multiple sales in the seven- and eight-figure range—a surprisingly strong start to the art world’s most important fair. On this episode, we explore what’s behind these big-ticket purchases and what it means for the wider art market. Plus, we’ll take a look at the best work on view in Basel this week.

What began as an April Fools joke on the website Reddit is now being hailed as the world’s largest collaborative artwork. Over one million users, armed with one pixel each, worked together over 72 hours to create a canvas that now contains everything from the American flag to the Mona Lisa. On this episode, we’re joined by Josh Wardle and Kevin O’Connor from Reddit to break down this massive online art project. Will this digital canvas end up in MoMA? And what can a dog wearing clogs tell us about the nature of internet collaboration?

The genre of “bad painting” is a slippery one. On this podcast, we discuss the label, which has been applied to a wide-ranging group of artists throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. What they share, wrote curator Eva Badura-Triska in an essay for the 2008 show “Bad Painting: Good Art” at the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna, is a refusal “to submit to artistic canons.” So what exactly does that mean? Though artists from Francis Picabia to Rene Magritte are among early practitioners of “bad painting,” can the label continue to exist today, when there are no singular artistic canons to reject?

Last Thursday, a 1982 painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat sold for a formidable $110.4 million at Sotheby’s. It set a record for the New York artist, who both joined the exclusive “$100 million-plus club” and displaced Andy Warhol as the most expensive American artist at auction in one fell swoop. This week, we break down the sale—both what it means for Basquiat’s market going forward and whether it changes his place in the art-historical canon.

The 57th Venice Biennale opened last week, and on this episode we share our highlights from this year’s “Olympics of art.” How did Christine Macel’s central exhibition stack up against Okwui Enwezor’s in 2015? Was Anne Imhof’s exhibition for Germany—which earned the Golden Lion for the best national pavilion—all it’s cracked up to be? And beyond the Biennale, is Damien Hirst’s massive two-part Venice exhibition worth a visit?

This year marks the 80th anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, and on today’s episode we delve into the history of this iconic work. Originally created to memorialize the bombing of a defenseless town during the Spanish Civil War, the painting has since become a universal symbol for revolutionary struggles. But even with this significant legacy—is Guernica really Picasso’s most important work?