The Conversation Art Podcast: Recent Episodes
Michael Shaw
A podcast featuring both one-on-one and three-way roundtable conversations with contemporary artists, dealers, curators, and collectors--based in Los Angeles, but reaching nationally and internationally.
"To Post, or Not to Post….That is the Question"
In this pilot episode of The Intrepid Artist, the main question asked by a listener is whether sharing (or even having) one's social media plays an important role in grant and open call decisions.
Arleene advocates for developing a thoughtful, engaging and empathetic feed, as opposed to one in which an artist is simply constantly sharing work. She wants a feed in which the artist shares who they really are, beyond the gallery setting; whether to use Stories vs. Posts, and the importance of sharing what you want to share, and how Arleene likes to be able to share her failures on IG as a way of showing her full output and working through those failures; whether you would make the work if it isn't/wasn't posted- a key question for artists to ask themselves, and how (of course) the ultimate objective is to be engaging in the studio.
In the 2nd question, a listener asks how to get motivated to draw, to make work, which has Arleene recalling a lifechanging moment in her first real drawing class in art school, led by a professor who asked his students if they needed – not just wanted – to be there; Arleene and I share our very different takes on what it feels like being in the studio- euphoria vs. reality; how the research and other behind-the-scenes work done in the studio that's necessary for making our work goes unseen, and for Arleene that means it's hard to have gratitude when she's not making the art.
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In the extended Patreon BONUS section, Arleene talks about her forms of meditation- the gym and working out, as well as swimming, as key rituals that help to clear her head before she gets to the studio, so when she's there, she's in the most optimal mental space to focus on her work.
Hunter College professor and author of The War of Art, Lauren O'Neill-Butler talks about:
Her 12 years at Artforum magazine, including its balance between advertising and hard-core art writing, and how her chapter on Fierce Pussy was written while at Artforum; the classes on Activism she's taught at Hunter College, which were not to get students to become activists but to make them aware of its history and context; how teaching activism and writing the book were both 'rage containers' but also ways to inspire difference; how activisms 'expire,' including in the case of her colleague Carrie Moyer, whose hardcore activism (including her campaigns for Dyke Action Machine) lasted two years and followed by going back to the studio and making abstract paintings; the difference between 'activists' and 'artists activists,' which culminated in a question at one of her book events at the New York Public Library: "why are you focusing on artists? What makes them so special? Why can't you talk about other activists too?" and how, in addition to bringing an aesthetic to their activism, as part of the answer, artists are beleaguered; the seminal moment in the artist Rick Lowe's career, when a student living in the 3rd Ward of Houston asked him why, as opposed to just showing them the problems in their neighborhood that they were already aware of, wasn't he being creative about coming up with solutions?; her contention that all art is political, but what does an artist's role look like in terms of their actions; how there's no purity in America and no purity in activism, and how Project Row Houses wouldn't have become as robust without the corporate effort; Sarah Schulman's recent writing on the importance of solidarity, and how the left keeps pointing the figure and keeps eating itself; what Project Row Houses looks like, including the mix of affordable and market rate housing, artists who live in them, and expensive condos recently going up in the neighborhood amidst preserved housing in the 3rd Ward of Houston.
In the 2nd half of our conversation, available to paid Patreon Supporters of the podcast, Lauren talks about:
Why she included (former guest) Ben Davis's critique of Project Row Houses, along with a contextual framework on the challenges of limiting the effects of gentrification, primarily as a way to point out that it isn't artists who are the problem fixers, it's our government representatives; for Rick Lowe and Project Row Houses, it was about trying to do better for the locals; the highly influential and impactful activist organization P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), started by artist Nan Goldin, which was instigated by the terrific irony of the Tate Museum, with £4 million in donations from the Sackler Family Trust, purchased Goldin's "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency" at the same time as she was addicted to Oxycontin (the highly addictive pain medication that led to an epidemic, of which the Sacklers are known for); the successful objective of P.A.I.N. (which is a non-partisan group despite it being formed by a politically progressive artist) to eliminate the art-washing of the Sacklers by putting their names on so many museum wings, and in turn what it was like for PAIN members to attend the protests with fellow protesters who were in very different cultural spheres, including hard-core trumpers; how savvy PAIN was in cultivating and working with the press, which really got their actions thoroughly covered, and even their private meetings were recorded, which helped provide lots of content for Laura Poitras's documentary on Goldin; how Lauren uses YouTube video footage of the PAIN protests, which were so well thought out and dramatic, in her classes; why she didn't right about the Stop Oil! Activist actions in museums (because it's mainly taken place in the U.K.); how the effectiveness of a protest depends very much on the press coverage and the level of circulation of the images from a given action; how most activisms have a figurehead (Goldin), and how it matters, for better or worse, when there's a public-facing person in a group; how successful activism depends on bringing in new blood and new ideas, and how big a factor burnout is for activists; the state of agitprop, or postering, today vs. the 90s- Carrie Moyer and Sue () of Dyke Action Machine would say that the street postering they did wouldn't work today, because there's just too much visual noise, and Lauren's nostalgia for the 90s for those reasons; the 'Secret Handshake' sculptures of trump and Epstein that have been making the rounds on social media around the world, work which she hates but recognizes as effective nonetheless; the hostile takeover of the New College of Florida, Lauren's undergraduate alma mater, by governor Desantis, and how she's been part of the alumni response to the takeover including the forming of nonprofits, a project that is very close to her heart and how she's been involved in it for the past three years, and the struggle of the school was recently featured on "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver."
Writer and Frieze editor-in-chief Andrew Durbin talks about:
His book tour for "The Wonderful World That Almost Was," which has been hectic; how he became familiar with Peter Hujar's work initially, and why his and Paul Tek's legacies really took off after their deaths; Peter's persona and personality as someone who could be as charming and engaging as can be, but also someone who flew off the handle with a volatile anger at some in his life, and how he actually using photography to deal with some of that anger; how Paul Tek appeared to be thoroughly charming and quintessentially hippie-ish from the various television footage of him in interviews, despite his ultimate distaste for and rebellion against the hippie archetype, and how he had an ongoing contradiction in wanting to be around people and then wanting to get away (he often questioned the love of those who loved him), which he did prolifically, from Miami right out of school to various parts of Italy throughout his adulthood; Peter's troubled relationship with his mother, who was emotionally abusive and neglectful, and whom was described by a boyfriend of Peter's at the time as "very good at being unsatisfied;" how Peter learned much of his photography skills working in commercial photos studios in the '60s and '70s (including that of Richard Avedon) and eventually applied and expanded them in the darkroom for his own work, and to what extent Gar Schneider, his friend and the printer of the work in his estate, will make prints posthumously from the estate;
In the 2nd half of the conversation, available to Patreon supporters, he covers:
The legacies of Peter and Paul, including via Linda Rosenkranz's book "Peter Hujar's Day," which became a film by Ira Sachs, and how Andrew's book may just be part of the rise in their respective public profiles; how he was more interested in and relied on their own memories of their childhoods (and adulthoods) as opposed to thru the lenses of family; how Andrew melded with his subjects, and how consuming and surprisingly somatic the experience of writing the book became, leaving him unsure how to re-fill his time once the writing finally ended; how thru writing the book he had to confront his own fears of AIDS, of death, and his insecurities, and the therapist who guided him gracefully through that process; how, despite the book being published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, he still maintained his full-time job (editor of Frieze magazine), and in fact how much the book strained his finances, as biographies turn out to be expensive endeavors (with almost no opportunity for grants to support them); how the reason that Andrew's book and Ira Sachs' film (Peter Hujar's Day) are coinciding has to do with a hunger for authenticity, including especially a yearning for a time (the '70s) in New York when artists could live together in a community and scrape by financially on whatever they made, a time long-gone but one that even some young people are aware of; iconic writer/cultural critic Susan Sontag's relationships with Peter and Paul, the latter of whom became infatuated with her, and how Andrew showed her as 'an intoxicating' individual, and what that feels like; Paul's complex relationship with his sexuality, to the extent that he often pursued relationships with women, whom he dated quite often but never got serious with, and how sexuality was something he may have tormented himself over; how the actor who played Peter in "Peter Hujar's Day" could never fill Peter's robust shoes, but at the same time how happy Andrew is for how many people the film has brought to Peter's work; the differences between living in New York and London (where he lives now), including how London actually has more in common with Los Angeles in terms of its size and its more deliberate social dynamics whereas in New York you're constantly running into people everywhere; and how he'll finally be ready to transition to his next project once this one if finally done, as it's been such an immersive, somatic experience.
James Delbourgo, professor of history at Rutgers University and author of A Noble Madness: the Dark Side of Collecting from Antiquity to Now, talks about:
Why he's written about contemporary art so extensively, as a history academic who's very interested in the present, going to galleries and wondering who collectors are right now, raising a lot of questions about archetypes for what would become a big part of his book; how collectors can not only be defined as powerful, they can also be defined as weak, unhinged and deranged, among other things; how the profile of the collector, over time, is more a corkscrew than an arc, with the Freudian view of the collector was seen as repressed and even dangerous, whereas the contemporary collector is seen as being more about power; how in Robert Bloch's book "Psycho," upon which the movie was based, the Norman Bates character is actually described as a collector but one who is ugly and unprepossessing, and how the Hitchcock film turned him into a charming, ingratiating figure who turns the audience on his side; how really thoroughly experiencing housed collections (prime examples are the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, CA, and the Vittoriale degli Italiani in Gardone, owned by Gabrielle d'Anunzio) was embedded in his writing the book; the collector as puppeteer, as orchestrator (and collector) of people, as William Randolph Hearst was; how encountering someone's place, and their things, is "a physical experience that constitutes the way you understand this person and your relationship to them," as James put it; and how Freudian interpretation has had such a lasting relevance over the years, even as it's gone out of fashion.
In the 2nd half of our conversation, available to Patreon Supporters of the podcast, you'll hear James talk about:
How hoarding, like the Middle Ages, has waned, and is tossed around far too lazily; the 'l' word, as in "loser," which he used to describe Robert Bloch's Norman Bates, whom he qualifies as a 'lovable loser,' particularly because collectors like Bates collect authentically, out of passion, not for financial gains; how he couldn't quite get the marketing department to change the subtitle of his book (particularly "The Dark Side" part), and why he's interested in authentic collectors, those who collect for love, with no thoughts of profits or strategy, the type of collector who he believes is vindicated in the end, as opposed to the Charles Foster Kane-type collector, who collects to accumulate; the democratization of collecting, including 'garbologists,' in which everything can, and does, get commodified; countercultural collectors, who collect things like deformed animal corpses, their own child's placentas, and other curiosities, and how they don't care what people think of them, or in fact that they want to defy popular opinion…as James put it: "their truth to self is uncompromised…by notions of taste or fine arts or utilitarianism…they're the freest people of all…they've freed themselves from the tyranny of the respectable opinion of other people;" and finally he describes an exhibition about Marie Antoinette at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (the lines to get in were staggering), a collector of shoes and porcelain and snuff boxes and furniture…who was so vilified/demonized for political reasons, as the enemy of the people…she is the classic case of the political demonization of a collector who is executed as if it would purge the suffering of her subjects; the most classic case of that political question around the collector, and how, ironically, it was her execution that made her immortal.
John Byrne, author of "Useful Art- How Activist Artists Can Change the World," and professor of Useful Art at Liverpool John Moores University's School of Art and Design, talks about:
The city of Liverpool and its art community, with about 20 total galleries, and how he fits into it; where he'll be book touring the book; a key framing in the book, being in a 'neo-liberal occupation' that we live under, which has a huge impact on the culture industries and means the financialization of essentially everything; the surprising pushback there's been at conferences and other events where Useful Art is discussed, including a lot of resistance from those in the art world who may feel that their positions of power are being threatened; the complex but far too under-considered distinction between "use value" and "aesthetic value," and why it's worth considering "use value" as a legitimate part of art-making (and which can even somehow manage to incorporate some aesthetic value); how one of the things he's interested in is having a radical re-think of what aesthetics are but also what they can be; some among many Useful Art projects, including by individual artist Tania Bruguera and Indonesian collective Ruangrupa, which curated Documenta 15, and how they came to be as a group…and, in turn, what the effect of having Ruangrupa curate that Documenta, which was an adventurous choice of curation, a role that John has heard described as "the curatorial Everest."
In the 2nd half of our conversation, available to Patreon supporters of The Conversation, John Byrne talks about:
how ruangrupa came to be, a very different trajectory as they didn't grow up in a culture with contemporary galleries or museums (though they did go to art schools abroad), but had a goal to make a living as artists through the collective, more specifically the "lumbung," equivalent to a co-operative; how the controversy that arose from a single figure with a swastika in the much, much broader scope of ruangrupa's curation led to calls of anti-semitism which overshadowed that Documenta from an outsider's and the press's perspective, and how John believes this distraction was used by many as a way of avoiding discussing some of the core meanings and significance of ruangrupa's contributions to the vaunted art event; the importance of "switching the aperture of the Overton Window," a term he mentions several times, which is about re-orienting your settings in terms of shared understandings of what big concepts are, like Art with a capital A, and how venturing into Useful Art doesn't in any way mean excluding being an individual artist who works solo- they can exist simultaneously; it's also that if we don't open up and expand the definition of what an artist can be and art can be and who can make it, we run the risk of surrendering Art to the neoliberal occupation; his interest, back in the day when he was a young person, in DIY culture (Rough Trade Records, et al.) and how that's a good analog for Useful Art projects; the artist Ahmet Ögüt, a former student of John's who started The Silent University, a knowledge exchange which evolved into a significant cultural platform; Tania Bruguera's project for the Tate Modern which entailed accessing/experiencing police horses and their corralling, and how inside the institution it follows certain basic and old-school protocols, whereas she also has done several projects outside the institution/into the street/community; the concept of 1:1 Scale Art, which the critic Steven Wright appropriates from a Lewis Carol story, in which a map is produced that is so elaborate that it covers everything that exists in the 'real world' of that map, and Wright takes that perspective and applies it as the idea that artists jettison making representations of the real world, and instead affecting change in the real worlds itself (one of the cruxes of the book), which the art world hasn't been able to understand because of the condition of neoliberal capture; a former student who's working on a project in which public libraries become spaces of the Commons, open to all kinds community members including especially those on the margins (whether pensioners, immigrants, etc.); and how posting some of the entries from the Association of Arte Util in open community meetings/events has been a great starting point – another bringing someone in to introduce a skill – to get people engaged in a Useful Art project and think and live artfully.
Boston-based photographer Jim Dow talks about:
The Boston art community (which is often connected to the art school and universities) and why he's lived there the great majority of his life (he lives in the house he grew up in); he's a dedicated Mass-hole- there's an edge to people there and you have break that edge; how he navigates random passersby when he's photographing for long sessions with his wooden large-view camera (his exposures range from a second to 20 minutes), with people always around him (here's a short video of a food stand guy singing tango where Jim was doing a shoot); his experiences with the difference between analog and digital photography, each of its pros and cons, and why he uses digital for documenting exhibitions which he's used for his teaching; suggestions for how to best edit documentation of your own work, which starts with photographing on your phone, to get a good sense of color that you can use as a template for your photo editing; how he used the NEA's selection process, of not using artist statements as part of the process for the initial rounds, as a tool to teach his students (including as a guest lecturer at Harvard) about how decisions are made; the Harvard student he had who wrote a study evaluating the value of photography based on economic models; two fully adults students he's had over the years, and how their stories impacted both Jim and his other, younger students; and how the odds of becoming monetarily successful artists are worse than becoming a professional baseball player, at least by one (possibly obsolete?) metric.
This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod
In the 2nd half of the conversation, available to Patreon supporters, we talk about:
His own relationship to financial success as an artist, both as a teacher and a photographer, which has added up to a solid middle-class income, and how 'his photography supports his photography,' just barely; how crucial it is for artists to have day jobs; how scarcity and nostalgia play a big role in a photograph's market value; his insights on financial precarity, not only through his students but his own kids, and what he tends to advise kids to do vis-à-vis art school; how he worried about students who thought their path after leaving art school was being an art star – because of those low odds he mentioned – and meanwhile how many mature adult students he had who were in their 30s all the way up to even their 70s, and how they got so much out of his classes with the life experience they brought; how he wrote 'a million' letters of recommendation for students, always starting from scratch (no template); though he didn't want to necessarily become friends with his students, he's become good friends with about 7 of them between early 30s and early 70s; how he saw his students as "peers-in-training;" the visual sophistication of the recent college kids he taught, due to their lifelong exposure to such a vast range of imagery; how the women and the gender fluid students were infinitely more articulate than the men, in his experience; how one of his students, who grew up on a dairy farm, expressed her frustrations with class differences she experienced amidst her fellow students (read: privilege); and his next project, documenting the food stands and other businesses along north-south highway 111, using it as an opportunity to explore the 'hallway doors' along the way.
Hadley, Massachusetts and NYC artist Sarah K. Khan talks about:
How it's a "little miracle" to have a studio (a former chick coop on a farm in the 5-college area of Mass.) after so many years working in kitchens and other spaces not dedicated to her work and where she can really spread out; her short films about the immigrant experience in New York via food trucks (particularly her Queens Migrant Kitchens series), and how she was originally motivated to work in this area in 2015 as a way to follow up on the fall-out from 9/11 among the immigrant community; the challenges she had getting street vendors and other food makers in being filmed, because they were afraid of being surveilled; the films' impact on the street vendor community, including one woman who was able to grow from a street vendor stall to a brick-and-mortar restaurant (and keep the food stall active); her collaboration on 'Speak Sing Shout: We, Too, Sing America' with the animator Simon Rouby; her film and photography work in Old Dehli, one of the many world crossroads she's covered; how making things for herself, first and foremost, is a practical way of making work (this may or may not be connected to her not being trained in a BFA/MFA kind of way; she has advanced degrees in food studies and has a background in integrative medicine); and how the core of her work is talking about the migration of people, plants and ideas (often women, often domestic spaces).
This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod
In the 2nd half of the conversation, available to Patreon supporters, we talk about:
Sarah's background in integrative medicine, including teaching chefs about nutrition, and taught Western nutrition to Eastern practitioners; how it's time to grow our own vegetables as a way of taking control of our own health; vegetables and herbs people can grown themselves, both as food and in teas; plant-based diets, which are followed by most of the world; how food and culture infuses the ceramics, prints and animation work she's been doing; the research and work she's been doing in southern India and how it connects with the history of 'the Sultan,' and in her case replacing that story with the Queen of Shiba; how her engagement with her own cultural lineage in her work can encourage viewers to engage with their own cultures; how she's created her own pipeline as an artist, without a BFA or MFA (having come from nutrition and science); her filming all over India (including in Nagaland in the far north) of women farmers; and how compassionate and tuned in she is to the immigrant experience.
Artist and legendary street artist Robbie Conal talks about:
His family history, including his two activist-and-politically inclined parents, his background in fighting the power; moving up to Los Osos (in San Luis Obispo County) as a permanent residence (back after the 2008 crash), but keeping a small place in L.A.; what he misses about not being in the city (he's lived in NYC and SF as well as L.A.); his first big moment with public art, through postering, which was born out of caricature paintings he was making of Ronald Reagan's cabinet, which he dubbed 'Men with No Lips,' and alighted through a large postering campaign just as Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, was opening to the public in 1986; how he's Shepard Fairey's OG, and how he was an influence on him as a future street artist (though Fairey said, "I can do that" quite confidently); his personal mantra: "apply what you do best to what you care about most," which in his case his drawing and talking smack (does best) and American democracy (cares about most); how, to make his work quicker to keep his work temporal, he switched from oil painting to charcoal and then to acrylic with oil accents; how all his friends who have his art (mostly of terrible characters) have them in their toilets; and his most popular work, "Watching, Waiting and Dreaming," a triptych of Gandhi, the Dahli Lama and Martin Luther King.
This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod
In the 2nd half of the conversation, available to Patreon supporters, we talk about:
How he's sustained himself financially over the decades outside of sales of his work, from teaching to receiving donations to his postering campaigns to lots of (young) volunteers; what he thinks about street art, and mural art, today, and the distinction between graffiti, street art and poster art, and how his reputation saved him from competing street artists when he was postering; our different respective takes on street art, and how Leon Trotsky taught him that everything is political, and street art is inherently political; what he's learned from terrible jobs: mainly, you can't make good art, let alone great art, in your spare time, while holding down a full-time job (and doing the work on the side); the most commonly asked questions he's received about postering (how many times have you been arrested?); how part of your mission as a poster is muscling up for the consequences; and what the best thing is to say to the judge when you're asked why you did it.
And for the final 15 minutes of our talk, he covers the breadth of logistics related to putting up posters in public/on the street, which he refers to as 'acts of civil disobedience.'
Napa, CA-based artist Arleene Correa Valencia talks about:
Why she lives in Napa, CA, and the two distinct versions of the town, for the wealthy and for the poor ("you're either the owner of the vineyard, or you're working the vineyard," as she put it); how she's the first generation to not be working the vineyards, his dad having worked the vineyard for a period before transitioning to hand-painting etched wine bottles for a winery (which he had to ultimately leave for lack of being paid enough because he didn't have an MFA); her favorite wines by grape (Pinots and Cabs from Sonoma mainly), and more recently a master fabricator color theorist and surface touch-up artist; making her dad's dreams to become an artist come to fruition through her; how she always refers to the work she makes as 'ours,' assuming everyone knows that her father always has a hand in the projects, in addition to consistently collaborating with makers from her culture of origin; the letters she exchanged with her father, while he was working to lay a foundation for the family to move to the U.S., among the artworks acquired by Stanford's Cantor Arts Center; her complicated DACA (Dreamer) status, and the exhibition she was able to have in Mexico (in Puebla, about 2 hours from Mexico City) which ultimately allowed her to apply for, and get, a green card; how she had to defer her dream to go to a 4-year university or art school until she received DACA status, and then she got a Diversity Scholarship that allowed her to attend California College of the Arts, which she would never otherwise would have been able to afford; how one of her 1st interviews was for someone interested in learning about being undocumented in the arts (originally published in Hyperallergic, she had to have it taken down for legal reasons to protect her); how her various supporters propelled her into her art-making and her art school education, and in turn the questions she asks herself about how she can help others, undocumented and otherwise…
This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod
In the 2nd half of our conversation (available on Patreon), Arleene talks about:
How her mom comes from a family with 36 brothers and sisters, so is part of an enormous extended family; the BRCA mutation in her family, in which bodies are much more susceptible to various cancers, including breast cancer and ovarian; why ICE hasn't been active in the Napa Valley area, very likely because people of wealth and/or power won't allow their wine supply to be affected; how aware she is of her career and her sales, and that she's proud of her production rate and the work her gallery is doing with her; the demand for her truck paintings, and why she has a need to make those paintings, not producing them for a paycheck; when she requested a collector give her more time to finish a piece that she wasn't happy with, and re-made it; how integral her dad is to her work and her process, and how he's celebrated along with her, if only through his tremendous pride in her, and that it wouldn't all happen without him; the work they do with a tattoo family, and how it's similar to the dynamic that she and her dad as a family do together, which she acknowledges is a bit like the man behind the curtain; her Tochtli (rabbit) tattoo, a symbol in her family that signifies selflessness and the ultimate sacrifice; how the evolution of her being tattooed, which started when she was 18, has been about honoring the story of her ancestry and claiming her identity, and how her brothers, like her, are acquiring full body suits of tattoos.
London-based photographer and writer Michael Collins talks about:
The flat where he’s lived for 35 years, which is getting ‘Wallace & Gromit’ crowded; how he keeps film in his deep freeze (aka freezer) as opposed to anything edible, and how he’s happy to shop for the day, while he points out that Brits see American refrigerators and are overwhelmed by how large they are; and by the way, we’re also bludgeoned by advertising here, compared with the UK and Europe; how he sees our social media consumption as giving in to the impulsive at the expense of the rational, a battle he gives in to daily for a half hour on IG…and how sometimes, you just want to look at a panda falling out of a tree; why readers (of books) make better viewers of artworks; how when his photographs are printed at full scale (4 x 5 feet) you can walk into them and how part of photography’s schtick is that it’s nosy, that it admits everything in it; his takeaways from giving a presentation at the Hampstead Photographic Society, in which have the members bolted for the door at the break; the importance of 19th century photography to understanding the history of photography, and how it’s not shown enough in museums (at least in London); how he started studying politics, but switched over to art, initially stumbling into photography as an editor at a teenage girl’s magazine, then moving to The Observer, and then he became picture editor at the Daily Telegraph, where he realized, amidst a more rushed editorial structure that went with predictable stock photographers, that the most interesting photography was not there to fulfill another’s agenda, but in pursuit of independence, to fulfill its own agenda.
This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod
In the 2nd half of our conversation (available on Patreon), Michael talks about:
The challenges of evolving and following your own path at the expense of taking the more marketable route, which means maintaining your integrity, and how his photographs, and his writing are both better than ever; the complex and fulfilling experience he had visiting and re-visiting a Jeff Wall museum exhibition; how the photographer Martin Parr dominates the scene in Britain, and how all his pictures look roughly the same, and yet he’s kind of this hero in the country, through the ‘steamroll of publicity,’ and how there’s far more depth, wealth and nuance out there than we’re being allowed…; his first art review (for The Daily Telegraph), of Andreas Gursky’s exhibition at Tate Liverpool, which uncovered a surprising digital edit, one he was turned on to by one of the museum custodians, and when he wrote the review that included his misgivings about the work, the Tate press office told him he was being cruel (to which he replied, “that’s not being cruel, that’s being honest”), and how another artist’s agent threatened to sue for a negative review; our respective takes on art writing and criticism, in terms of what he appreciates vs. can’t tolerate, and what I appreciate and can’t tolerate; more about the world of magazine editing, which he describes as being a lifetime ago…; and finally, to wind down our conversation, we talk about his book, Blind Corners, which features several essays exploring across the spectrum of photography and photography’s history; in particular we review a passage where he compares Americana via Kodachrome and Hollywood light with the dull, austere light of Britain, and he goes on to call out Dubai as the culmination of late capitalism.
Pasadena-based artist Linnéa Gabriella Spransy talks about:
Growing up between Wisconsin and a commune in Oregon, the latter which she describes as a complete commitment more than an experiment (the town was Wildeville, Cape Junction being the closest city); how you radically live out the life of Christianity, including giving away all their stuff, and how her father played in a Christian glam rock band that toured the world; having a positive commune experience, yet winding up ‘inevitably becoming part of the machine,’ aka capitalism, despite her wonderings as a child, which are still there; her period living and working in Kansas City for seven years after grad school at Yale, figuring out which voices to use in her work and make enough to have a house and a nice studio, and yet felt claustrophobic by its limitations and where she saw herself in the future if she had stayed there; her mantra in Kansas City, “if there’s no pressure, I still do it,” in determining what work she would keep making no matter what; her intense experience at Yale, where everyone, even the future stars, received harsh criticism for a range of reasons; the big advantages of artists who are extroverted charmers, especially in comparison to the ‘ambiverts,’ as Linnea calls them (and who we both essentially identify as), and even more so the more misanthropically aligned artists; her tenure co-founding Bridge Projects, a spiritually-oriented gallery in Hollywood, which had the misfortune of opening days before the pandemic.
In the Patreon BONUS episode (379A), twice as long as episode 379/the public feed, Linnea also talks about:
Her complex take on the existential state we’re in politically and culturally in the context of history, in which she identifies with people from numerous eras of the past, confronting their own challenging times and what we have in common; her experience living in Pasadena as a diverse place with a significant history and culture, and, as a neighbor to Altadena, what their respective roles have been as neighborhoods for artists in the context of the Eaton fire; her different working methods, from the through-the-process-oriented abstraction, as opposed to her much more research-based figurative work…she describes each of them as working different muscles; in the context of her ‘growing a human person,’ as she put it, the importance of having a rich internal life, interesting things, interesting people…; and whether she should get a studio in an artist building downtown, vs. sticking with her garage studio at home. She also asks (and to some extent answers) a question in support of the future artist advice podcast, The Intrepid Artist.
Camilla Taylor, Los Angeles artist, and curator of “My House Burned Down” (at Track16 Gallery), talks about:
Her childhood with complicated religious origins, between her Mormon LDS father and her mother who branched off to start her own organization (some might say ‘cult,’ per Camilla), and how art, for her and many artists, can often fit the functions that people are often looking for in religions (including being part of something bigger than themselves); how she’s really good at compartmentalizing, seeing difficult experiences from her life as existing in rooms in a house, where she can shut the door to any given room; the epic story of experiencing her house burning down in the Eaton Fire in Altadena-- from her 16-hour drive home from the Sitka Center residency in Oregon, to seeing it when she approached her part of the San Gabriel Valley, to arriving home and having the wind lift her off her feet, to their belated evacuation; and subsequently how she found out her and her partner’s house, and her studio, had burned down, and that that process of mourning has been like; how trauma has manifested from losing her home and studio, and the range of reactions she’s received, including a lot of suggestions that are tone-deaf; what insurance will cover, and the studio spaces she’s been loaned/gifted for now, putting off the need for having to rent a studio for the first time (since studios have always been attached to her living spaces).
This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod
In the 2nd/Patreon Bonus half of the conversation, Camilla talks about:
How, because of her visibility as an artist, she’s been more fortunate than many others who lost homes/studios in the fire by receiving a range of resources that artists less visible have not; the lawsuits against Southern California Edison, who allegedly started the Eaton fire; the group show she curated, ‘My House Burned Down,’ at Track 16 Gallery, which included four artists who lost their homes in the Eaton fire, and four artists who lost their homes in prior fires, and how the show addressed a commonality in losing one’s home as an artist, with an extra emphasis on materiality; how while she doesn’t know what the right reaction is, when people learn that her house (and studio) burned down in a fire, she knows that the reaction that she’s going to rise above it, like the phoenix from the ashes, is absolutely not the reaction to have, because it’s hurtful especially in its negating of what happened to her; and we have an extensive exchange about what I have long referred to as “the P-word,” as in ‘practice, as in ‘my art practice, a word Camilla also hates, and she talks about why language has become so important in art/the art world, including her take that artists overcompensate in art because, essentially, we/art is so unimportant to everyone else; and Camilla shares her favorite and least favorite art-speak words; and how in her teaching she’s honest with students about how their work affects her, as opposed to making art historical comparisons.
Brooklyn-based artist and sometimes New Yorker magazine cartoonist Guy Richards Smit returns to the podcast eight years after his first visit to talk about:
His admitted high self-regard, paired with self-awareness, which we identify as being rare; our respective experiences and takes on artist blowhards; his history with cartooning, going back to his obsession with gag cartoons, going back to a New Yorker cartoon book he read at his grandparents’ house when he was a kid; how he started making his own gag cartoons; the steps he took to build his cartoon portfolio, leading to getting published in the New Yorker after a year and a half of submitting (which is much quicker than some); the cartoon he made for the New Yorker website, the ‘Daily,’ that went viral (receiving 1500 comments, not to mention other viral stats), including getting re-created in Turkish by a Turkish cartoonist; how he actually sees the cartoons as sketches for paintings (and gets quite painterly in the making of them); how about half of his cartoons are more insider-baseball-art cartoons, and the one he made that references one artist that he had in mind, although several reactions interpreted it as another artist, whom Guy actually heard from, wondering if it was about them.
In the 2nd half of our conversation, available to Patreon Supporters of the podcast, you’ll hear Guy talk about:
How the parameters for where art can come from have changed, and how humor in art is still held, especially in the U.S., as a bit off limits; how his desire to paint a rock led to his Sisyphus cartoon (every cartoonist wants to do a Sisyphus cartoon); his desire to make a put out cartoons that are beautiful, not really a quality that the cartoon editor, or even cartoon consumers, are necessarily looking for; why the New Yorker cartoonists haven’t been able to form a union, which is related to why there aren’t really any other high-profile venues for gag cartoons to be seen; how he didn’t have a gallery for 15 years, and was “forced to sell” his own work, using Instagram successfully for sales in the pre-algorithmic takeover era, when he got three to four times more engagement than he gets now (and thankfully for him he now doesn’t require sales thru IG as much); his new dealer, Adam Cohen, who opened the gallery A Hug from The Art World three years ago; and how wanting to draw a Miro sculpture led to one of his most popular and most responded to cartoons at the Independent art fair in NYC this past spring.
This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod
In Episode 376, Alex and Theo Gribaudi-Plytas talk about:
Their location in rural France, at the southern end of the Champagne region, where there are tons of vineyards, many of which they take friends from out of town to, and how even in their minimally populated area they see plenty of income inequality; how they met while living in London’s version of dorms for art students, even though they were going to art schools that weren’t at all near each other, and how they evolved from friends to romantic partners to romantic partners who make art collaboratively; Theo’s art school professor, Leigh Clarke, who looked through the class’s sketchbooks, and if they didn’t past muster he’d throw them in the trash (it was symbolic); how they organically evolved into making art together as a pair, and what the advantages (and occasionally disadvantages) are, including the energy from vibing off each other’s ideas, and how one can inspire the other and v.versa; how their life is their art, particularly with the evolution of their home/home studio and garden, all together as a piece.
In the BONUS Full Episode, available to Patreon supporters of The Conversation, Alex and Theo discuss: Their perpetual moving in and moving out of studios in London, each after just a year or two, because they got priced out or the situation was unsustainable, and how they’re translating the various functioning areas of those fleeting studio spaces to this permanent one, which is still very much a work-in-progress after three years (it’s a former school house built in 1879 and a house next door); their 24-hour work/artmaking sensibility, which they make sound quite appealing, a world in which breakfast can be art, or they can be working on art-related sewing while watching a film; why they left the city for the country, even when they had such a wonderful time during art school and beyond in London; the details of their property, including the view into the forest, where hunting takes place (and which we discuss); their complex relationship using Instagram (they don’t like to but need to); Theo’s sister, Sarah Rosenzweig, who they both admire for getting off of Meta platforms despite living in the mountains in the south of France (she sends out calendars and advocates for progressive political causes).
Marcie Begleiter, an artist based on the Central Coast of California, talks about: artist residencies, including the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, where she recently did a 4-week residency, including collecting biological specimens/samples; how her time and relationship with the residency evolves over those four weeks, which has lead to artistic breakthroughs; how she likes deadlines, and can structure her residency experience with the clock ticking and puts extra focus on what she’s doing, and in addition having the support of the people running the residencies; the importance of the artist statement in applications for residencies; what her experience was like at Sitka, from where she stayed (at an offsite house as opposed to the onsite cabins) to how she spent her days and nights, and what her studio days are like on a residency vs. the studio where she lives; why she left New York (Manhattan) for, initially Taos, N.M., and eventually California (essentially she needed more access to nature); and the interdisciplinary program she started at Otis College of Art that focuses on social change in the community.
In the 2nd half of our conversation, which is available on our Patreon page, she talks about: how she’s restarting the local CERT (citizen’s emergency response training) training in her unincorporated town (of Los Osos, CA), partially inspired by not having much access out of her area in an emergency; how she and her husband came to leaving Los Angeles for Los Osos, back in 2015/16, after she toured extensively with her documentary on the artist Eva Hesse; the benefits of living in a small town (Los Osos) which she prefers to city life; the lucky circumstances of having a great studio space in a location where you wouldn’t expect great studios; why she vastly prefers a studio outside her home; she breaks down the different type of residencies: 1) fully funded plus stipends…2) fully funded, no stipend….3) highly subsidized…4) paying full ride; and finally, she addresses our standard finishing questions: how does she feel like social media in this moment, and how success is defined across various careers in the arts.
Oakland-based graphic artist Hugh D’Andrade, author of the graphic novel “The Murder Next Door,” talks about:
His first graphic novel, The Murder Next Door, including what led him to finally making a graphic novel after being a big fan of them for a long time; studying fine art at the California College of Arts and Crafts back in the 1980s, and then going back to the same school, now called simply California College of the Arts, to get a masters in graphic novels; graphic novelists who have been influential to Hugh, including Adrian Tomine from nearby Berkeley, Chris Ware, who he refers to as both a giant and a genius in the field, as well Art Spiegelman, Thi Bui (whom he had as one of his graphic novel professors), Marjane Satrapi, and Phoebe Glockner; how the graphic novelists he’s met have generally been very talkative and have quirky sensibilities, but also have introverted streaks which are necessary for long stretches alone that are necessary for producing their work; how he worked on the beginning of his graphic novel while in grad school, where the crits were very nurturing and supportive, unlike crits from back in the day (undergrad); where graphic novel reading falls in our attention economy; the value he puts on the hand-drawn in comics, with modest digital intervention; and how Vipassana meditation, the first chapter of the book, played a big role in Hugh’s healing journey….
[the Conversation continues for another hour in the BONUS episode for Patreon supporters]
The Conversation Art Podcast | creating a podcast that goes behind the scenes of the art worlds | Patreon In the 2nd half of the full conversation (available to Patreon supporters), Hugh talks about: the distinction between cartooning and illustration, and how challenging it is to render a person from multiple views in that style; what feedback he’s gotten so far, with at least one reader saying that it was ‘very unique,’ probably meaning they found it too dark; the roll his parents played (or didn’t play) in healing from his trauma (the murder the book is focused on); his trolling of conspiracy theorists on social media (which is described in the book), which came out of his reaction to people making things up about who was responsible for the murder, along with the pros and cons of engaging with a conspiracy theorist; his description of 3 or 4 major career trajectory paths for artists in big art capitals, inspired by his nephew and students and their impending career paths- the A path/A-train: rock star; B path/B train: you have a partner who has a job/supports you financially; C path/train: artist with a day job; D-train: you live just outside of a major city, or in a college town, or rural areas; housing in the U.S., particularly in the art capitals (a sort of passion of both of ours) and how he bought a house in East Oakland, a part of the city he had never been in and he’d been living in the East Bay for decades; how he’s in a ‘coffee dessert,’ meaning he needs to drive at least 10 minutes to get to a good coffee spot, leading to a beautiful paradox: as a participant in gentrifying his neighborhood, he realizes that as soon as that fancy coffee place pops up in his neighborhood, the gentrification will essentially be complete; the neighborhoods Hugh lived in in San Francisco, particularly the Mission, Hayes Valley and the Tenderloin, and their respective reputations and what he experienced living there as an older young person going to punk shows and the like; his friend Rebecca Solnit’s book Hollow City, about how gentrification displaces people of color as well as creative communities; we dig quite a bit into the weeds of the housing crisis, and how he lived on the cheap in the Bay Area for years, including getting around by bike up until 10 years ago; and finally he talks about his music show highlights over the years, including his changing relationship to the Grateful Dead over the decades.
In Episode 373, Molly Rice & Rusty Thelin, co-founders of RealTime Arts in Pittsburgh, talk about:
The especially niche field of their work, which is the performance of live theater that aligns more with visual art and doesn’t really check any of the ‘theater’ boxes, and how they have interactive elements but don’t confront the audience the way a lot of performance art does (they describe a “lot of conventions around theater… that contemporary audiences have trouble with…”); their series “People of Pittsburgh,” whose tagline is ‘Theatrical Portraits of Extraordinary Ordinary Pittsburghers;’ the size of their audiences and how they’re shows are often tailored to the neighborhood’s they take place in, and how they make their performances as open to all as possible, with a ‘radical hospitality’ option whenever possible; their hosting of Little Amal, the puppet of a Syrian refugee girl that travels the world doing performances amidst community and how their version added a play that incorporated a massive local crowd; their rock performance, ‘Angelmakers: Songs for Female Serial Killers,’ which was a tight show, as compared with their more experimental and improvisatory shows, and how they got a much more mixed audience, including concert-goers to a rock concert, for that show.
This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod
In the extended Full Patreon Bonus Episode, Molly & Rusty talk about: how they financially support their program, through a mix of fundraising, grants and occasional ticket sales; the gentrification that’s happening in Pittsburgh, which they admit to being a part of, and moved there because they wanted to be somewhere they were needed, as artists, and was a perfect medium in between a big city and a small rural town; Pittsburg’s cohesive art/cultural community, which reminds Molly of 1990s Austin, TX, when she played in bands; how she consider their work multi-disciplinary, influenced both by site-specific work, and that they’re descendants of the happenings of the ‘60s and ‘70s (including Claes Oldenburg and Robert Wilson); their current approach to social media (including looking into leaving Meta platforms); how connecting is a large part of success; and how they feel about connecting with the podcast’s Open Call (the short answer is: ‘really good’).
In Episode 372, the 1st half of the conversation with Amsterdam-based painter and photographer Claire Witteveen, she talks about:
Her putting off painting initially in favor of photography, for reasons both practical and related to insecurity, partly based on her mom being an artist who juggled that and being a mother; how she can feel completely disconnected from her photography (mainly when it’s a commercial object), but at other times, especially taking portraits, she feels very connected to her subjects; and how with painting she sees it as a monologue, whereas photography is more of a dialogue; how one photography job, combined with painting sales, can sustain her for the year; the complicated nature balance of making good work, and maintaining integrity, while also making a living, or enough income from the artmaking to survive on; the wide swings she can go through in the studio, from thinking she’s re-inventing the wheel in the morning to thinking she’s a total hack later that day; the nuanced factors that make a painting interesting, instead of just good, and an anecdote in which a collector at her opening asked what one of her paintings was about, only to find that it didn’t really matter what she said, because it already ‘spoke to his soul;’ how she connected with her gallerists in Paris, whom she feels very lucky to have and very supported by; the transformation of her work(paintings) once they entered the context of the gallery; and why one particular painting in a show that was in a catalogue and getting so much attention during the run of the show…didn’t ultimately sell. [Claire has a show opening in Paris at Atelier Bergère on April 3rd, which will run until May 1st.]
Gabrielle de la Puente, half of the art critic duo The White Pube, talks about:
A few things people outside of the UK need to know about Liverpool, where she’s based; the origin story of the White Pube, when Gabrielle and Zarina were in art school together; the reputation of Central Saint Martins, the art school where they met, including where it was when they started school, which was already in a more gentrified, corporate atmosphere (they had to use key cards to get into the studios, for example); their working dynamic since their collaboration started, which involved more in-person activity early on when they were regularly in demand to talk about criticism at various art schools (because of how different they were from the clichés of an art critic), to now being more consistently using WhatsApp and ‘flying by the seat of our pants;’ how key it is that they post about culture-at-large, not just art (their film restaurant reviews have been their most read); her solo visit to a special preview of a Peter Doig show in Edinburgh that had a tragic quality to it, but also became a great symbol for the artist’s struggle; their book, Poor Artists, including how they wrote it with both readers as well as subjects who they interviewed (and paid), including a moment in the book when the narrator talks about their experience of a performance in a gallery; and the case of the late artist, Nat Tate.
This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod
The Conversation was recently included in Feedspot’s list of top art podcasts. We’re grateful to make the list again!
After learning about the Lights Out Meta campaign, a boycott on all Meta platforms from January 19th thru January 26th, 2025, it sounded like a good idea, and after reading about it more extensively, I think it's a necessary one.
Here are the articles I quote from in this one-off boycott episode:
Meta's pivot to the right sparks boycotts and calls for a user exodus
and-
Lights Out Meta: R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe calls for Meta boycott to protest rise of US far-right
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Meta Boycott And TikTok Ban Could Signal Social Media's Transformation
Founder of the SCOPE Art Show, Alexis Hubshman talks about everything from its size (approx. 300,000 sq ft of exhibition space), to the number of galleries exhibited (95 from 27 countries) to how he makes the fair run smoothly; his support of new and emerging galleries, giving many of them rent-free booths, subsidized by their corporate sponsor partnerships; how he sees the accessibility of the art at Scope as a form of open-source experience, emphasizing being welcoming to visitors; how and why they’ve taken more nouveau-pop sensibilities out of the exhibition equation; he breaks down Scope’s Miami week as catering to: high-end collectors and museum curators on Tues. and Wed., Thurs. into Friday are for “culture shifters,” while Saturday and Sunday are a ‘come one, come all’ scenario; how when he got sober 15 years ago, he decided to limit Scope’s enterprise to Scope Miami (no more Basel, London, Hampton, L.A.), to both focus the work and to allow for his quality of life; how he’s able to attend the other fairs happening simultaneously in Miami, which he credits to his great team; the shift in the industry towards sobriety between the 90s/2000s to now, even showing more of a yoga-and-sound-bowls kind of morning these days for his team; and how bullish he feels (was feeling) going into the fairs, Scope specifically, based on the election, the location, the market generally and other intangibles.
In the latest OLD NEWS roundup with Emily Colucci of Filthy Dreams, we start by revisiting our prior, charged exchanged about Louis CK, in which Emily was admittedly a bit of an apologist for him, which alienated some listeners- in this case, while we don’t land on the same page, we do air out our respective perspectives, and Emily dubs herself a contrarian. This leads to a brief discussion of the culture of heterodoxy, which promotes viewing issues from multiple angles as opposed to just your typical ideology; Emily’s interest in what she calls ‘the trash aesthetic,’ the pinnacle of which she explored by braving a late-October rally at Madison Square Garden featuring you-know-which-politician as the headliner, an event she ultimately describes as surprisingly boring; Emily’s own article (appearing in the Oct. 12th OLD NEWS), “GAGOSIAN-BRANDED STICKER MADE ME HATE NAN GOLDIN’S “YOU NEVER DID ANYTHING WRONG,’ in which she critiques Goldin’s exhibition at Gagosian through the highly distorted lens of being made to cover up her phone’s camera lens with a Gagosian-branded sticker (and Emily now knows the impact of her blog post about it- which is that the gallery’s not going to do the sticker cover-up anymore); Emily shares her admiration for Goldin, not only her art but also her activism, through P.A.I.N. as well as that related to A.I.D.S.
To hear this episode in its entirety, including bonus content on Gary Indiana, Libbie Mugrabi and more, go to: patreon.com/theconversationpod where you can support the podcast for as little as $1 a month
In Episode 368, Tulsa Kinney, artist and now former founding editor of Artillery magazine, talks about:
Why she sold the magazine after running it for 18 years, including burnout but also how impersonal she feels the art world has become since its more modest size when the magazine began; the lack of support she/the magazine received from many galleries, while receiving support from institutions like the LA Philharmonic; the dual role she’s had as an art magazine editor and as an artist, and seeing the art world from both perspectives; how it’s been lovely being recognized (if not necessarily respected) when she walks into galleries; the pros and cons of running the magazine virtually, even though a print magazine; her highlights over the years running Artillery, including interviewing Mike Kelley, despite his writing an angry letter-to-the-editor for an unwanted call-out in the magazine’s gossip column (she did offer him a magazine retraction for the bit, which helped get him do to the interview), and what a breath of fresh air Tulsa says he was in the art world; getting the last interview with Mike Kelley, and the pushback she got for having him on the magazine’s cover when he took his life, as well as the lack of interest from the art world (including the Mike Kelley Foundation) in that interview as historical material
In our continued dissection of the OLD NEWS, Emily Colucci and I discuss:
Indicted former art advisor Lisa Schiff and her upcoming bankruptcy auction, to be conducted by Phillips; how Paul McCarthy is slowly throwing out his immense artwork, WS (White Snow), because he can’t store the work any longer, and how he failed to get any museums to buy the work, ultimately deciding to throw the work out piece by piece, which is, of course, logistically challenging (it takes up 4000 sq. ft of space and contains some very challenging- (read: yucky) ephemera); the art of Operation Under, a collective of artists who make wall paintings in underground tunnels throughout LA County, in one case the writer (Matt Stromberg of Hyperallergic) encounters racoons both in painted form as well as the in-real-life, glowing-eyes kind; how one museum took to pairing smells with a pre-Raphaelite artwork exhibition (including ‘dewy grass’), and how it led viewers to stay with the work a significantly longer period than traditional scent-less art viewing.
In the latest round of OLD NEWS with former guest Emily Colucci (creator of the art & culture website Filthy Dreams), we cover: cancel culture through the lens of James Franco (who was part of our original recording back in 2016) and Louis C.K.; Cai Guo-Qiang’s botched fireworks performance at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as part of PST Art’s ‘Science and Art’-themed mega-art event, including injured spectators; our own thoughts and feelings about fireworks, particularly of the neighborhood kind, and how Emily kind of loves the tacky spectacle of them; how California College of the Arts is considering closing its doors, and whether it’s surprising there aren’t more private art schools that are closing or on the verge of doing so; how and why the art market is struggling, and how Emily is frustrated that if nobody is selling anything anyway, why is everyone putting on boring shows?; how Emily tends not to interact with gallery-sitters/gallerinas, having been one herself (at Sikkema Jenkins) and just wanting the visitor to leave already; and our respective strategic approaches to gallery-hopping with an emphasis on efficiency and avoiding everything blurring together at the end of the day.
The Conversation is doing an Open Call for future guests of the show (thru Oct. 10th)- if you’re interested in being a guest, please submit here: "The Conversation Art Podcast" - Guest Open Call (jotform.com)
Brooklyn artist, former hardcore-band singer, and recurring figure in Bianca Bosker’s ‘Get the Picture’), Liz Ainslie talks about: singing in the scream-core band Give Up while she was in college, including how she was able to maintain her vocal cords, and eventually crossing the divide in choosing between music and art; how she moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn 20 years ago (eventually taking over the master lease of an artist loft after initially having several roommates), how the neighborhood has changed over the decades, and how and why so many of her artist peers have managed to remain in New York despite the high rents; how she’s currently organizing with her neighbors in the building to maintain the artist’s loft laws; how she and the artists in her community piece together income from various sources, only one of them being their artmaking, and how several successful artists in that community have stuck around (as opposed to moving upstate, for example) to both give back and to stay connected; her day job and how she’s able to work remotely, but still needs to find a coffee shop or other places to work away from her home; working for other artists, mainly in big Tribecca lofts, and the skills she learned, including the logistics of running professional artist studios; and how as an artist you should be very clear about everything from scheduling visits to respective responsibilities for artwork in your communications with fellow professionals.
In this New OLD NEWS episode, Dr. Maiza Hixson and I talk about the profile of recent Turner Prize winner Jesse Darling in the New York Times-- We discuss Darling’s persona as portrayed in the article, his anti-capitalist leanings; what his future as an artist looks like, reading beyond what he says in the article towards his immediate future, having accepted an Oxford professorship; the public notoriety of the Turner Prize as compared with relative accolades in the U.S. (I claim that the Turner is much more public-facing than anything the U.S. offers, though Maiza claims that there are comparable points of recognition here in the States); and how Darling and his art are perceived by the public, both the NY Times public via the comments section, but also how contemporary art is taught, learned and thought about beyond the confines of the art world itself.
Writer, former art dealer, and author of All that Glitters- A Story of Friendship, Fraud, and Fine Art, Orlando Whitfield talks about:
His interest in street photography, and how philosophy and critical thinking led him to apply and then attend Goldsmith’s College; a quick update on his former friend, co-worker, collaborator and employer Inigo Philbrick, who in the book was sentenced to seven years in prison but has since been released, and how he sent a heckler to one of Orlando’s book readings; how and why Orlando feels Philbrick has changed since the time of their friendship and working relationship, particularly in the last 7 years, about the time that he began committing fraud in his private art dealings; the various ways Orlando wasn’t cut out to be a dealer, particularly the perpetual let-downs after a seemingly very interested buyer (from a pool of too wealthy, feckless, collectors) suddenly pulls out, and how 9 out 10 deals die on the vine; the challenge of indoctrinating new collectors from his and his gallerist partner’s (Ben Hunter) friends- they could either go on holiday or buy art, not both, and so opted for the former; his involvement in a complex secondary market sale of a Christopher Wool work on paper, including the various stresses and complexities which ultimately, even though lucrative for Orlando, made him feel like a fraud.
To listen to the full episode with Orlando Whitfield, please become a Patreon supporter of the podcast here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod
In the 2nd half of the episode, available to Patreon subscribers, Orlando discusses:
The very wealthy inhabitants of the art world, many of whom Orlando encountered, and their separation from, and sometimes even contempt for, those who aren’t also rich themselves; how in his transition to becoming a writer, he’s found the writing world/community much more open and welcoming than the art world; how he finds the way the art world operates is like an aristocracy, where you’re not told the rules until you’ve broken them; how All that Glitters has sold well thus far in the U.K., and how the rights have been purchased for television by a UK production company; and who Orlando thinks should play Orlando, who Inigo thinks should play Inigo, and who I think should play Inigo in the film version of the book.
In Episode 362, artist, curator and recent PhD (from U.C. Santa Barbara) Maiza Hixson co-hosts this episode’s OLD NEWS, featuring updates on: protests, including the case of #metoo being spray-painted onto Gustave Courbet’s painting ‘Origin de monde,’ and how the article had a correction stating that the image was of a vulva, rather than a vagina; the sentencing of a woman who was involved in the vandalism of a Degas sculpture in Washington, D.C.; the vandalism on the façade of the home of Brooklyn Museum director Ann Pasternak, and how these protesters are attempting to draw attention to the various corporate ties in the art world; protests and letters relating to the war in Gaza, and the very powerful people who are influencing university protests and various politics through corporate channels; the Kehinde Wiley controversy related to accusations of sexual assault made against him; the work of the Yes Men, and how it’s not about disruption, it is disruption, as exemplified in a recent intervention at a fundraising event involving a new housing development; how Maurizio Cattelan’s recent bullet-hole sculptures represent the insular culture of the art world; how Leonardo da Vinci was in the vanguard of eating, in that he was one of our early vegetarians; and whether we can qualify artists as being progressives, including taking a closer look at their carbon footprints; and the wide-ranging art and fandom of Miranda July.
To listen to the complete episode with Adam Henry as well as all past Bonus episodes, please become a Patreon supporter of the podcast here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod
New York-based artist Adam Henry talks about:
His recently ended show at Candice Madey gallery, and how he defines a ‘successful show’ (a mix of sales, critical dialogue generated, and future opportunities); the advantages of having a fellow artist as a partner, but how it’s also necessary to get alone time when you need it, including time for processing after you’ve had a show, which has included the fact that this is the first time he’s shown work whose meaning he doesn’t fully understand, and the first time he’s comfortable saying that; how one of the most powerful experiences you can have with art, is to have your mind changed; how important the process of perception is to him and his work, and how his journey through perception started with color theory and Josef Albers and wound up with Wittgenstein, and eventually he wound up in psychedelics; how his making abstract work during the rise of process-based abstraction (aka zombie formalism) was challenging in that he had far fewer opportunities because of the market shift; how important it is to put the emphasis on the intention of the artwork when viewing work, as opposed to the person who made it or the value; how his partner, who is also a painter – a figurative painter, in fact – has at times been the breadwinner of the two, and vice versa, which has served them both well; the great exchanges he and his wife have about the exhibitions they view together.
In the 2nd conversation with author, recovering art worker and academic Valerie Werder, she talks about: the travails of clothes shopping for her job in the blue-chip gallery, not only how fraught it was but how much it brought up class issues as she moved through the sartorial gauntlet, where her appearance as a frosty, inaccessible object was part of her role; the complicated variations of class when it comes to precarity and poverty, including a culture where those who are cultivating an aesthetic of bohemianism or even poverty are existing alongside those who are actually financially poor, the latter of whom sometimes don’t even have culture on their radar; her fictional and, perhaps, real relationship with the enigmatic character ‘Ted’ from her book Thieves, which is complex in its values, dependency, and deceptions, and which coincided with her own attraction to anarchism and anti-capitalism, and how ‘Ted’ in some ways embodied these tendencies; the complex social roles and hierarchies that Valerie is living within, and the experience of downward mobility while simultaneously being connected with an upper echelon of culture; how transitioning to the hierarchies and bureaucracies of Harvard was fairly smooth and easy after being in the blue-chip NY gallery world; and how while she still sporadically writes about art, she’s for all intents and purposes stepped out of the art world proper. NOTE: in the Bonus episode w/Valerie, she talks all about the very real shoplifting she participated in and is a main feature in Thieves.
Bianca Bosker, journalist and author of Get the Picture, talks about:
The genesis of her deep dive into the art world - working with gallerists and artists, doing art fairs and galleries with collectors, and doing a stint as a security guard at the Guggenheim Museum – which largely came out of her need to learn whether she could learn to ‘see’ like an artist, as opposed to a ‘normie Philistine,’ as she was called by many (she was also, as a journalist, called “the enemy”); the elitism, opacity and various exclusionary art world rules she discovered from dealers and artists she encountered through her immersion process, and how “dishearteningly little” artists themselves often knew about how the art world works; how parts of the art world use secrecy as part of their survival, to build mystique, among other reasons; how she worked for five different artists in the course of researching the book, but ultimately only wrote explicitly about two – Julie Curtiss and Amana Alfieri – in the book; how Context – everything about the artist (social cache, etc.) EXCEPT the art itself is often overly valued, and something she pushed back against; how she was drawn to working with emerging artists, and wound up working with the painter Julie Curtiss at a turning point moment in her career, in which she was both starting to make a living from her work but also getting bullied on social media for her work’s huge price escalation on the secondary market; how brave it was for Julie to let Bianca so thoroughly into her studio and make herself so vulnerable; and why she got so pumped after making sales while on the floor of the Untitled Art Fair with Denny Dimin gallery, without actually getting any payment for those sales (due to journalistic integrity).
This episode features the 1st half of the full episode. To get the full version, please visit: Patreon.com/theconversationpod The Conversation Art Podcast | creating a podcast that goes behind the scenes of the art worlds | Patreon
Recovering art worker and author of the novel Thieves, Valerie Werder talks about:
Her entrance into the art world via her demanding position at a fancy gallery in her attempt, as a newbie, to get access and proximity to the art world; her ability to conform and comply under pressure (in the gallery environment), and the what the flip side of that looks like; what the coercion, that came thru various forms of care and the engendering of a ‘family’ dynamic at the gallery, looked like and how it played out, including through fancy paid meals and credit for fancy clothes so she could look and act the part; how working at a gallery gave her a completely different relationship to language, including the quick turnaround she had to produce, becoming a ‘language producing machine’ in the process; the craft of writing a gallery press release, and how she ultimately became, upon writing her novel, the ‘commodity’ herself that she in turn needed to sell.
In the 2nd half of the episode, Valerie talks about: her creative workarounds to promote her book, including using two very different kinds of publicists, and how throughout her professional career she’s been aware of and pushed against the given economic constraints, and how she believes it’s important to be explicit and unashamed about everything from her day jobs to the creation of her (writing) brand; the difference between the mythologizing/branding of artists back in the days of a much smaller (yet cut-throat) New York art world (of Donald Judd, Robert Smithson and Walter De Maria et al.) and the more diffuse, digital world of today, and how in her book she wanted to explore the legacy and imprint of the peripheral art world figure ‘Valerie’ the character who herself was invisible but whose writing, through catalogues and press releases, was/is all over the art world, and in the process the real Valerie the writer becomes a visible figure, a brand herself; the strange relationship she had with her former gallerist boss, whom she became the voice for in press releases and personal emails and even interviews, and how she studied her and had the writings of her voice vetted by the gallerist herself, for which she was valued highly for absolutely being ‘her voice;’ how she wrote her book on an ‘unpaid sabbatical’ from her job at the gallery, in a friend’s cabin in Tennessee, and the complicated circumstances in which she quick her job upon returning from that ‘sabbatical,’ which she told the gallery was an artist residency; her doubts about whether her gallerist employer read her book (Thieves); the actual front desk worker (aka gallerina) protocol employed at the gallery where she worked, as far as how to treat different people who came into the gallery, whether they were VIPs who should be greeted by name (through the gallerina memorizing the faces of those collectors) or lowly artists/nobodies who could be ignored; her experience getting a once-over from a wealthy collector at the gallery, and giving that once-over right back to him; Frank Stella and his provocative artwork titling, and how it somehow wasn’t Valerie’s job to really do research about his work, despite the gallery selling it.
Seattle-based artist and restorer Debra Broz talks about:
Living in Seattle, where she moved to from Los Angeles a year and a half prior to our call; how Seattle is full of rule-followers who are also anarchists/anti-capitalists; how she found her Seattle studio, where it was important to have decent heat, especially for her sculptures; her reasons for leaving L.A. for Seattle, and some of the lifestyle differences between the two cities, and how welcoming Seattle has been to her as a new artist; how various sites, specifically Colossal and the Jealous Curator, have been huge in growing her art & design-focused Instagram followers; her pacing and general approach towards her IG feed, where she’s made peace with the fact that she can only go as fast as she can go, nor does she want to try and gamify the system, and how, ultimately, IG is a “feel bad machine;” how Instagram has been punishing people who use it to have sales; the “enshitification” of apps (including IG and Tik Tok) and how it’s made our experiences on them so much worse; her sculptures, made from ceramic figurines, which were originally made for American middle-class homes; how the best places to find her sculptural elements are “out in the wild,” i.e. thrift stores, as well as friends giving her objects, which is her favorite way to acquire her materials; the “if we look for what we need, we’ll find it” serendipity that’s a driving force in Debra’s making process; and how the meme, “I didn’t realize being an artist was making the same thing 1000 times until you die,” is a sentiment very familiar to most artists.
Chris Wiley- Artist, New Yorker photography critic, and contributing editor at Frieze - talks about:
His fleeing upstate to the Catskills during the pandemic, and what his relative disconnect from the art world and the city has been like since the move (though he still keeps a small apt. in the city); the differences between English and American artists in terms of academia vs. the market; his epic two-part articles on Zombie Formalism, which covered not just the movement as a market phenomenon but also what it’s led to, including economic precarity and eventually what Wiley has dubbed ‘debt aesthetics;’ the term from the Crypto phenomenon that Wiley applies to many artists of Zombie Formalism, ‘Walk Away Like a Boss,’ to describe those who were able to earn a very solid chunk of money over their brief careers, often parking it in real estate for long-term security; how Zombie Formalist paintings were, as he put it, “’fast, fungible and friendly,’ just like what currency is;” artists who have the ‘it’ factor, an authenticity demonstrating they would be making their art no matter what; the great promise of a Universal Basic Income for artists, particularly in the context of a debt aesthetics that virtually forces artists to compromise their visions instead of getting to be weirdos; his current thoughts on the implications of AI, which he’s been interested in for a long time, having a father who was interested in computers and science fiction when he was growing up; how and whether artists will be safe in terms of jobs and sustainability in an A.I.-dominant landscape, and how the art world isn’t ready for the kind of speed with which A.I. advances will affect art; the AI-generated photography of Charlie Engman, who has been making a bizarre and prolific body of work using the platform Midjourney, despite being a ‘technophobe,’ in his own words; the challenged viability of a career as an editorial photographer with the rise of A.I.; and how his article on A.I. and Charlie’s work, in The New Yorker, pissed a LOT of people off, and why.
Michael Finkel discusses the remarkable story of Stéphane Breitwieser, the subject of his recent book, The Art Thief, including:
The genesis of the book project, starting with a three-paragraph article, and eventually turning into a 10+ year-project; the style and methods of theft that Breitwieser and his partner, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, put to work; Michael’s favorite Breitwieser crimes; his widely oscillating perception of Breitwieser, from a selfish brat to ‘the best art professor I’ve ever had;’ how Breitwieser protected both Anne-Catherine and his mother by lying on their behalf, but ultimately told the truth to authorities when it came to his own role in the crime sprees; Breitwieser’s Icarus-like trajectory playing out over several years as a result of his increasing addiction to art theft; a teaser of an ongoing plot point related to one of the Art Thief’s main characters, one which may very well be revealed in the soft cover release of the book; and how what Breitwieser and Christopher Knight, the protagonist of Finkel’s earlier book, The Stranger in the Woods, have in common is that they’re extreme outliers who make their own rules.
This special episode features return-guest-but-more-co-host Deb Klowden Mann to discuss the recent New Yorker profile of mega-dealer Larry Gagosian. Deb starts us off by updating us on her closing of her eponymous gallery due to multiple health issues, which made the work unsustainable. We follow that update with our discussion of the article, including:
Our respective histories with Gagosian and/or his collectors mentioned in the article; how Gagosian’s decision to allow the profile may be because it humanizes him to the audience, but also, as Deb proposes, to make him and the gallery more appealing to younger artists they could possibly take on; Deb sites a book from the early ‘80s, “The Art Dealers: The Powers Behind the Scene Tell How the Art World Really Works,” which illustrates how when it comes to collectors treating art as investments, it’s been happening for nearly 200 years; how the funding that goes to high-priced artworks sometimes comes from the same people who fund grants/grant foundations, Deb suggests, and she advocates for a more transparent, as well as more evenly distributed financial model for the art world(s); Gagosian’s gallery courtship of the English artist Issy Wood, and what that scenario points to as far as his courtship process, the future of the gallery and his legacy plans, and the vulnerability apparent in that dynamic; Deb’s desire for more really well researched and written pieces (like this one by Patrick Radden Keefe) about how everything works in the art world; and finally, Deb brings up the book The Art of Death as a counterpoint to one’s amassing of power and wealth to stave off mortality, because in many cultures up until the 1800’s, one of the main functions of art was in fact to help people understand death as part of life and prepare them for it.
Long Beach-based artist and former produce field worker Narsiso Martinez talks about:
Growing up in a small town in Oaxaca, Mexico (Santa Cruz Papalutla), with several brothers and sisters, and a mom and dad who were often on the road for work; his resistance and questioning of working in the fields, something his family did when he was growing up as a way to have food on hand in tighter times; a very condensed version of his travails in crossing the border from Mexico into the U.S., which took him 4 tries to do; his initial settling in Los Angeles with one of his brothers, who is in the car upholstery business; going to an adult high school to learn English as well as other classes, on his way to going to Cal State Long Beach for an undergraduate, and eventually an MFA degree; how he made his adult high school studies a higher priority than his day jobs, so if a job conflicted with school, he would leave the job; his ups and downs at LA City College, where he got his associate degree and may have gone into biology if it wasn’t for his lack of resident papers; what it was like working in the fields – physically as well as mentally – up in Washington state, where he picked produce including asparagus, cherries and apples, both for one full year, as well as over the summers between Cal State Long Beach school years; his gradual discovery of produce boxes that became the surfaces/objects for his paintings, starting with collecting a few boxes from a Costco; his complex thoughts and feelings about class differences, including thinking of himself as something of a role model for who people can become, as well as the importance of education, and family support, in making his long journey, which he describes as many different lives.
Connecticut- and New York City-based artist Alexis Rockman talks about:
His semi-exodus from Manhattan, where he’s lived his whole life, to a fairly rural part of Connecticut called Warren; leaving his Tribeca studio of 33 years and building a new one on the property of their house in Warren; his early love and interest in animals through his anthropologist mom’s encouragement which led to everything from keeping fish, turtles and iguanas in his childhood room to going scuba diving and spending a lot of time in Australia, where his stepfather was from, encountering wombats, Komodo dragons, and large flightless birds; his appreciation of science fiction movies of the late 60s and early 70s, and how the ideas in those movies were an influence on his apocalyptic paintings; the origins of his painting ‘Manifest Destiny,’ which is in the collection of the Smithsonian Museum; his recent work, which is in conversation with historic painters – Courbet, Clyfford Still, Peder Balke – and the joy of painting in addition to addressing climate change; how he jumped for joy for ‘owning’ natural history, as a painter, when he first established his artistic vision at the start of his career in the mid-1980s; working as a vision artist for films, including Life of Pi and the remake of the Little Mermaid; and how he feels about his relative ‘fame,’ and the ebbs and flows of success.
Hungarian billionaire Gabriela and artist and architect Andi Schmied talk about:
Andi’s residencies, across Asia and Europe, as well as the Triangle Arts residency in DUMBO, Brooklyn, where she first connected with her fellow Hungarian, the billionaire Gabriela; some of the developments around the world that led her to the realization that there’s a glut of useless, ultra-wealthy housing that’s not actually being used, particularly a complex of villas about 100 miles outside of Beijing, where the groundskeepers wound up squatting in the empty units; doing a residency in New York in 2016, when she encountered Gabriela for the first time, who would become her key collaborator for what would her project ‘Private Views;’ the world of ultra-high end real estate, including the dynamics of a real estate agent showing a penthouse apartment of a very tall building to a client, and how Gabriela navigated these experiences; the questions the real estate agents showing these penthouses and other very expensive apartments asked, and what that revealed about the world of the ultra-wealthy; the various ways super-tall buildings in Manhattan are impacting everything from income inequality to changing the flora and fauna in Central Park from the long shadows they cast.
Art Advisor Lisa Schiff has been in the news over the last two weeks, because of lawsuits being filed against her by clients who weren't given the artworks they paid for, and Schiff has subsequently filed for bankruptcy.
How did this happen? Was there any indication, from the warm and thoughtful conversation I had with her in late 2014, that anything like this would happen down the road?
We re-visit Episode 99, from early 2015.
In Bonus Episode 344, San Francisco and northern Virginia-based artist Alex Nowik talks about:
The art communities he’s been part of in the Bay Area, which have been fruitful for him as a self-taught artist, and how he feels that there are little ‘bubbling’ art scenes that are continuing to thrive around the Bay, whether in Oakland or San Francisco, with young artists; his complicated family background, including a half-Japanese, half-Polish mother who grew up in California, often passing as white (she sometimes called herself ‘Eurasian’) and his father, who was from Poland and escaped the Holocaust through a harrowing series of hidings and passing as a gentile with fake names until he was able to emigrate to Montreal; his ability to distance himself from his parents’ respective traumas; his various day jobs over the years, which he describes positively, particularly working as a gardener; his car-free lifestyle both in SF and in Virginia, just outside of D.C.; and his thoughts on the Philip Guston exhibition at the National Gallery (which he’s seen twice), and how he thinks about the controversy around Guston’s hooded figures in terms of the Jew in America and assimilation.
To access this Bonus Episode of the show, please consider supporting The Conversation on Patreon here:
The Conversation Art Podcast | creating a podcast that goes behind the scenes of the art worlds | Patreon
Brooklyn-based artist Nancy Blum talks about:
Her relationship with Judaism, both growing up and as an adult, where her exploration of healing and self-soothing from generational trauma, which ultimately connects with her art; her alternative interpretation of the word ‘therapeutic,’ in relation to art-making, how it can be something deeply personal that artists are trying to share; the use of flowers in her work, which was radical when she started using them 20 years ago, and how their use has risen since the pandemic; her experience making it work as an artist in New York City, where she’s settled after many years living and working as a nomad; how artists can now have successful, legitimate careers anywhere in the U.S., and why she’s chosen to live in NY because it meets her needs and she loves it, even if it doesn’t love her; bringing a Buddhist approach to the way she thinks about her work can career, and how important it is for artists to have the tools to deal with discouragement so that they keep going; questioning what defines success for an artist, and how the distorted perceived norms of success and what we should be or have become vehicles of defeat and low self-esteem for artists; how meaningful it’s been for her to make the public art mosaic for the 28th Street Subway station, and how she wants her public works to do the work- healing, bringing joy to people, etc. – for her; her earliest public projects, which got her into making public art; and why university art teaching was unsustainable as part of her career path.
In this in-between (342 and 343) episode, I talk about the new Bonus Episode with Stefanie Kogler-Heimburger (for subscribers only), and recent OLD NEWS including a photo contest winner who used AI to generate his image and subsequently withdrew his win; a successful Union strike at RISD; and art vs. advertising in the form of a muffin mural for a bakery in Conway, New Hampshire.
To access the newest Bonus Episode 342 plus all other past Subscriber-only episodes, become a Patreon donor for as little as $1 a month by subscribing here:
The Conversation Art Podcast | creating a podcast that goes behind the scenes of the art worlds | Patreon
Berlin-based artist and co-curator of the exhibition ‘Class Issues: Art Production in and out of Precarity,’ Norbert Witzgall talks about:
The term/phenomenon of “Hope Labor,” which drives the economy of fine art and is based on the presumption that your hard work will pay off when you ‘make it;’ how Berlin has become prohibitively expensive for artists, which among other things has led to artists creating platforms such as the Ministry for Empathy to help artists in need; mental health in connection with artists’ labor conditions; the challenge for migrants in getting German grants, largely because of accessibility and knowledge; the intersectionality of exclusion, which is essentially how access includes less frequently acknowledged statuses such as class background and housing in addition to race and gender; art’s struggle to represent the society at large, using the example that there are no Germans of Turkish descent who are recognized in the art world; homeless artists, in particular a German collective, ‘Anonymous,’ included in ‘Class Issues;’ the poverty of some artists in old age; the transparency they used in ‘Class Issues,’ including production costs for the artworks, the family background of the artist, and what an artist’s pension is/will be; his at one time 11 simultaneous freelance jobs, which meant a big ‘class journey,’ or class switching, between gigs; his decision to re-train as a fine arts school teacher, which he started but then left at 19, coming back this time because he has the life experience to bring with him; and the hope that we can decrease the amount of ‘hope labor’ being put out by many, many artists.
In this Conversation MIDWAY - between epis. 340 and 341 - I talk about the bonus episode for Patreons, featuring Blum-Weinberg-Keinholz-Rottweiler, as well as talk about the art services industry via the Worst Job Posting Ever Created, the Nan Goldin documentary, and Tom Sachs, among other related topics.
If you would like to access Episode 340A, which features four great stories from Art Can Kill, you can support The Conversation on Patreon here:
The Conversation Art Podcast | creating a podcast that goes behind the scenes of the art worlds | Patreon
Episode 340- Veteran art handler and preparator Bryan Cooke talks about:
Cooke’s Crating, the business he started back in 1975, and how it’s essentially a service business, one that has grown with the art market, particularly in the last 10 years; why they don’t use the word ‘art’ in the company title, and how they discreetly move art around, especially high-priced works; how and why he self-published his book, Art Can Kill; some of his near-death experiences in art handling, including two involving elevators (one of my least favorite places); why he put himself in the line of risk, shielding his employees from danger; and he tells a condensed version of an epic story from the book in which a client for all intents and purposes kidnaps Bryan and his colleague during a moving job, on a large estate outside Chicago.
In this Teaser for Episode 339A, which is only available to Patreon supporters of the show, we talk about becoming a supporter of the show, read from a bit of the intro to the book Art Can Kill, and talk about the comments from an article on the collector Adam Lindeman's upcoming March 9th auction at Christie's.
If you would like to access Episode 339A, which features three great stories from Art Can Kill, by Bryan Cooke (an upcoming guest on the podcast), you can support The Conversation on Patreon here:
The Conversation Art Podcast | creating a podcast that goes behind the scenes of the art worlds | Patreon
Arts writer and former professional surfer Jamie Brisick talks about: w hat it was like being on the pro surfing tour back in his late teens and early 20s, and how he developed his Plan B career initially as a surfing writer before moving into arts & culture writing; how he comes to art/the art world with a relatively fresh perspective, and has experienced some unsavoriness in the upper spheres in its being too much like high school in terms of popularity, etc.; what it means when, to quote the artist Paul Chan in this case, ‘Success is its own form of failure;’ the varied and fascinating work of Francis Alÿs, whom Brisick tried to get an interview with but was essentially blown off, but whom he still highly respects and reveres as an artist; the artworks, storytelling, and other idiosyncrasies of quintessential surfing-art artist, Raymond Pettibon, whom Brisick has profiled extensively and become friends with; the surf-skate pioneer Craig Stecyk (also a mentor of Brisick’s) and his crazy performance art stunts; and his relationship with the journalist and writer William Finnegan, whose struggle with his memoir may be a source of inspiration for listeners.
n the 14th installment of the podcast’s Virtual Café, we take as our prompt a Dec. review by NYTimes art critic Holland Cotter about politics in art:
About 10 artists in the Virtual Café (including past guests Ianna Frisby of Art Advice and William Powhida) talk about art and politics, including successful examples of political art; the nimbleness of capitalism to absorb all things protest; the challenges and failures of artists to organize, particularly artist unions; the question of whether artwork being in a gallery is neutered, in terms of its political/social power; virtue signaling in art, particularly political art; Theaster Gates as a strong example of an artist changing a community, and of socially engaged art; the importance of the rhetoric around so-called political art (including the good side of the word ‘didactic'); the lack of transparency in galleries reporting where their donations to (political) causes are allocated; and how to take political art to the people, as opposed to through the gallery system.
Writer and cultural critic William Deresiewicz, author of The Death of the Artist, talks about:
His motivations in writing the book, largely motivated by dispelling the myth that this (our current internet/social media era) was the greatest time ever to be an artist, as well as trying to understand how artists (not just visual, artists across all fields- writing, music, film & television) were adapting to making art and surviving in an this world; why he strongly believes that not everyone can be an artist; how and why the monopoly on taste has been broken through a more middle-brow level of connoisseurship; how we can’t dispense with the gatekeeper, whether it’s the curator of artists or our listening playlists; artists’ relative comfort (or discomfort) with using social media, which isn’t as tied to age as you would think; the wide variety of day jobs that artists do (including a list of 50 jobs/gigs that Deresiewicz compiled), and the degrees of poverty artists live with; the delicate and complex dynamic of artists walking away from being artists (which is of course very hard to document); the artist Paul Rucker (perhaps the only artist profiled in the book whom I should have heard of) who’s had a wide-ranging and remarkable career; the challenge of finding and working with the ‘typical’ working artist- artists whose careers were coming up but not yet well known; and what a solid work-lifestyle balance looks like for one of the artists in the book, as well as for Deresiewicz himself.
For this latest roundup of OLD NEWS stories, we’re joined by a very special guest, to talk about:
The MASS MoCA union; the new monument to the Central Park 5; the debate about bringing attention to the climate crisis by throwing food and attaching body parts to famous artworks in museum, as analyzed by Jerry Saltz in his piece ‘MASHED POTATOES MEET MONET,’ as well as through our own lenses on the phenomenon; how a stolen painting was turned into a popular throw pillow (which you can purchase online for $18.40 plus shipping); the struggles of Pace Gallery’s Superblue, and the history of Pace through the Glimcher family, including a botched diversity hiring of Marc Glimcher’s daughter; Guy Richards Smit’s cartoon, “WHAT DO YOU SAY TO SOMEONE AFTER A VERY BAD STUDIO VISIT?”; a consideration of big tech’s plundering of art and illustration for its generative AI projects, as poetically analyzed through Molly Crabapple’s LA Times Op-Ed, “BEWARE A WORLD WHERE ARTISTS ARE REPLACED BY ROBOTS;” why the director of Florence’s Uffizi Gallery is demanding employees follow strict guidelines for email etiquette; and what our respective OLD NEWS favorites for the week were.
Oakland-based curator and arts administrator Zoë Taleporos talks about:
Her straddling independent curating and government-supported public art curating/administrating in her role working for the City of Berkeley; how her curating is more about bringing artists in, as artist outreach, but not cultural gatekeeping; why public art looks the way it does, and why the language of public art has remained unchanged for so long, as well as the problems professionals are faced with in trying to change the face of public art; how one sculpture in San Francisco, while avoiding the problem of becoming a target for skateboarding, but instead became an ad-hoc BMX bike ramp; the alternative and more interesting version of public art: temporary public art, which allows a lot more flexibility and freedom; how panelists judge all public art candidates (Zoë has presented) by a list of criteria, and how she’s always in the room, but never voting as a panelist; the tension in the room when panelists with a wide range of experience with contemporary art weigh in on the candidates who are submitted; the strong mural history and presence in the Bay Area, which are not necessarily a deterrent to graffiti; and how it’s exciting for her to take a given artist’s work and translate it into public art.
Amsterdam-based artist Tjebbe Beekman talks about:
His show in New York at GRIMM gallery (which just opened when we spoke); his 9-year stint living in Berlin, before moving back to Amsterdam at the time his son was beginning school, and how he misses the big-city benefits of Berlin; the big turning point in his work and in his life, when in a span of less than a couple of years his mother died followed by his father’s tragic death in a boating accident, early on in a journey attempting to travel the world; how his father’s death was complicated by the slow to non-existent communication about what happened, and then the time it took to get his remains back, all of which led him to stop painting for half a year; how he re-engaged his artmaking by visiting friends at the Luceberthuis residency in the Netherlands, where he also found himself listening to a lot of John Coltrane, and between the music and getting in the heads of well-known painters, he got his mojo back; the influence the legendary painter Luc Tuymans had on him while doing a residency at the Rijksakademie; and how he’s thankful to make a living from his work, because even though the Netherlands offers lots of funding to artists, most artists who rely on it need to have 2nd jobs.
Joan Kee, University of Michigan art historian and current Ford Foundation Scholar in Residence at the Museum of Modern Art, talks about:
Her residency at MoMA, where she has been looking into expanding their programming to include art that is more international/not from the U.S., but from the ‘global majority;’ her career trajectory, from art history in undergrad to law school and then corporate lawyer for long enough to pay off her $100+K in debt, a calculation she was able to make partially due to her poker-playing experience); the obstacles she faced getting into a PhD art history program with her focus on modern and contemporary Korean art, and how she strongly believes that tuition for BA and MA programs are completely out of control (for out-of-state students at U. or Michigan, where she teaches, it’s currently 70K/year); her interest and expertise with emojis, including her repeated attempts to get a kimchi emoji approved by Unicode, the world text and emoji consortium (she also taught emojis in a graduate seminar); artists working in emojis, including Rachel Maclean, Laura Owens, John Baldessari and Antoine Catala, the latter whose work she calls the best emoji work she’s ever seen; the benefits and challenges of living in Detroit, and why she chose to live there instead of Ann Arbor, where she teaches; how she’s the first full professor of color in her department; how her book, “Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method,” was turned down nine times before it was accepted by U. of Minnesota Press, and subsequently led to a show she curated at Blum & Poe in L.A.; and the state of the art scene in Seoul, including the challenges for younger/smaller galleries’ survival amidst a pricey real estate market that’s regularly gentrifying.
ICA San Diego director Andrew Utt talks about:
Moving back to San Diego, where he grew up, after years away in the Bay Area and South America, and why he did; why San Diego’s art community/culture isn’t known as an art destination, and how he tries to address that deficiency; his route to becoming a curator, starting with his undergrad years at California College of the Arts, when he went to grad students’ studios and had the conversations that would inform his prolific studio visits over the years; the importance of bringing in outside artists, sometimes to be shown alongside local artists, but at the same time, the ‘brain drain’ of artists emerging from SD-based art schools and leaving for L.A. (or elsewhere) for more opportunities, the exodus of which becomes a generational loss over time; teaching artists, and the challenge of their retention; the ICA’s 5-foot and 10-foot rules for interacting with new visitors outside the museum; and where art engagement is headed, in terms of infiltrating cities, and through the growth of VR, AI and other interactive platforms.
Cole Sternberg, artist and creator of the Free Republic of California, talks about:
His painting process, which involves exposing his paintings to the elements, including in extreme form, starting with his (and his team’s) 22-day-long journey from Japan to the West Coast on a container vessel, exposing his paintings to the wind and even skating them over the surface of the ocean; what went into planning this expedition, the various friends he brought on in professional capacities, and the challenges of making the journey, the successes along the way, and its future life as a documentary; his epic Free Republic of California, a conceptual art project that uses California as a canvas to imagine and explore what’s possible for us as a society and as a civilization; how he writes letters to people in power, giving himself a title appropriate to each recipient, whether ‘conceptual artist’ or ‘chief conceptualist;’ the value he places in the Free Republic of California’s Constitution, which is the item he would own if he were to collect his own work; his relative openness to actually becoming a politician, while also realizing that the political sphere is not only too dangerous but ultimately simply not a productive route to making change; his first exhibition, in a bar during law school; his transition from having a day job as a lawyer to that of an artist, and how he actually never made as much income from law as from making art, surprisingly; and his rescue-animal-based farm in Santa Ynez, where he and his family settled during the pandemic.
BONUS EXTRA: in an extension of our conversation, Cole talks about his epic t-shirt collection, which is currently at about 1000. To listen to this EXTRA, please consider becoming an ongoing or one-time donor to the podcast via: theconversationpod.com/support
In part 2 with ArtNet News critic Ben Davis, we talk about: environmentalism and our approach to the climate, as well his emphasis on finding a good middle ground between overly dire and overly sugar-coated perspectives on the conversation; Christian Marclay’s video works “Telephone” – which Apple co-opted, making their own version when Marclay wouldn’t sell it to them – and “The Clock,” which Ben considers to be Marclay’s response to Apple and its iPhone, and images’ ‘place-lessness’ (which “The Clock” returns to us); how he frames the immersive art trend as a question of ‘what’s at stake here?,’ and how there are many trends that he feels needs to be seen from both sides; Alfredo Jaar’s immersive video in the most recent Whitney Biennial, prompted by the very short time window artists now have to gain viewers’ attention; the case of the lovably ordinary @world_record_egg, an Instagram feed that both parodied and addressed concerns about the effects of social media on our individual psyches as an artistic provocation; and Ben’s own tricky relationship with social media (IG).
Ben Davis, Artnet News's National Art Critic and author most recently of Art in the After-Culture, talks about:
Cultural Appropriation in its many forms, including in the context of Dana Schutz’s controversial “Open Casket” painting; Conspiracy Theory culture, including how videos connecting Marina Abramovic with satanic cults are far, far more viewed than videos about Marina Abramovic herself or her work; the culture that Conspiracy narratives come from, how they persist (often through individuals’ alienation), and why they become so popular; the luxury of people who get to say ‘neener-neener-neener’ in judgement of those who buy into them (the socially superior judging the inferior); Rubem Robierb’s ice sculpture at a fancy club during Miami Basel, which spelled out Greta Thunberg’s “How Dare You” addressed to politicians, and what that said/says about Art and Ecotopia, i.e. art and climate change; his experiences with the groups ‘Extinction Rebellion’ and its splinter group, ‘Extinction Resilience,” and his continuing involvement with Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), among other causes.
Val Zavala, former anchor/reporter for the long-running KCET (L.A. PBS station) series SoCal Connected and Life & Times talks about:
The ‘Extinction Circle’ group that she was part of for a couple years, meeting once a month to discuss likely human extinction (before the pandemic led the group to slowly disband; meantime she continues to be an active member of her local ‘Death Café’); how approaching humanity’s future is akin to Elisabeth Kubler Ross’ five stages of grief; the oil industry’s campaign of disinformation and its effect on the climate crisis; a profoundly thoughtful Buddhist take on our (humankind’s) fate; relating extinction to former guest Fernando Dominguez Rubio’s study of the preservation of artworks in the museum, and what Val thinks of the lengths museums go to maintain artworks’ longevity; the concept of EA, or Effective Altruism, in relation to human longevity; “Seeding” the future, which is to say leaving a better foundation for future civilizations; and her “New 10 Commandments for Future Generations.”
Val Zavala, former anchor/reporter for the long-running KCET (L.A. PBS station) series SoCal Connected and Life & Times talks about:
The ‘Extinction Circle’ group that she was part of for a couple years, meeting once a month to discuss likely human extinction (before the pandemic led the group to slowly disband; meantime she continues to be an active member of her local ‘Death Café’); how approaching humanity’s future is akin to Elisabeth Kubler Ross’ five stages of grief; the oil industry’s campaign of disinformation and its effect on the climate crisis; a profoundly thoughtful Buddhist take on our (humankind’s) fate; relating extinction to former guest Fernando Dominguez Rubio’s study of the preservation of artworks in the museum, and what Val thinks of the lengths museums go to maintain artworks’ longevity; the concept of EA, or Effective Altruism, in relation to human longevity; “Seeding” the future, which is to say leaving a better foundation for future civilizations; and her “New 10 Commandments for Future Generations.”
New York-based art appraiser David Shapiro talks about:
What he does as an appraiser, whether in-person inspections or putting together reports using photographs at the computer; his involvement with the Detroit Institute of Art’s collection appraisal, which was connected to the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the country; how appraisers value a work of art, from auction records to gallery sales (to the extent that can be verified) to the market as a whole, including trends; turning down offers to appraise works that have no apparent market value; his own career as an artist prior to becoming an appraiser, which included having success selling his work before he was even out of high school; how, when he returned to making art after grad school in art history he had less success, learning about “the fickleness and vicissitudes of the art world,” as he put it; and how he appraises emerging art, including within a market with a lot of movement in values, both up and down.
New Jersey-based painter and immersive art museum ‘host’ Kate Sharkey talks about:
Transitioning from being a preparator (at MoMA) to getting a job as a ‘host’ at the immersive art museum ARTECHOUSE, where she also does AV/tech work w/the projectors; what her job as host entails, including interacting with and managing guests’ experiences (some who do something called ‘candyflipping')whether or not immersive art experiences are actually ‘art,’ and which immersive art shows have worked best at ARTECHOUSE, particularly a work by Julius Hosthuis; and we talk about whether immersive art exhibits qualify as ‘art’ or ‘entertainment,’ and what other forms of entertainment they’re competing with.
Maria Brito, art advisor, entrepreneur and author of How Creativity Rules the World talks about:
Giving up on her teenage ambitions to become a singer because of the restrictive culture she grew up in; how from there she wound up being a corporate lawyer as a financially stable option that she thought made the most sense; how she made her way into the world of art advising as a disrupter, seeing that there was a clear lack of passion among many of the advisors and consultants she was encountering; the reasons behind the popularity of figurative painting (of course it has to do with collectors); getting a hold of a Banksy painting for a new client; her approach to becoming an art advisor, including her ambition to demystify the art world; the success of her business coinciding with the democratization of the market via social media (i.e. Instagram); and why she focuses so much on prices and values in describing artists in her book, partly as a way to challenge the stereotype of the ‘starving artist’ that so many non-art people hold on to.
Vista, CA-based artist Dave Kinsey talks about:
The gallery BLK/MRKT, that grew out of a design studio he co-ran, and launched as a gallery early in the 2000s in Culver City; his coming from a design and skate and graffiti background, and how he and his artist cohort were all generally making post-design, post-skate kind of work, and how they transitioned from street and/or skate and/or graffiti artists to more ‘fine’ art, working across genres; his love and appreciate of KAWS’s work, an artist whom he almost worked with, were it not for a disagreement with his partner; how he bought a property in Three Rivers (near Sequoia National Park), where a pipe broke which led to flooding and the ground turning into a ‘milkshake,’ and forced him, circuitously, into figuring out how to be a full-time artist; his commercial collaborations with big brands (Nike, etc.) and growing his own work in a more personal way; how and why he left advertising and design, and developing a financially sustainable art career; and how he has collected other artist’s work to support their careers as much as his being a fan.
In this OLD NEWS-oriented episode of the show, I talk about:
Immersive art exhibits, which are booming, much to my chagrin; a follow-up on the art world’s ‘ponzi-like scheme' involving a new participant, “Rich-Kid art,” effects on the art market in both the UK and the U.S. through new laws and regulations, a union formed at Pasadena’s Art Center, reconciling NFT’s with their environmental footprint (and their financial decline), and a painting of a polar bear in the Royal Academy’s Open Call.
In the 2nd part of our conversation, James and I talk about: working as an assistant for various artists, including making large-scale paintings for other artists, and wanting to be credited for his work, with a title such as “lead painter,” something that officially acknowledges his contributions; and meanwhile, how important the process of the making is to his own work; the things that keep James up at night, from the climate crisis to worldwide political bifurcation…basically, “human tragedy is running deep…;” further connecting collectors to his work through his artist talk at his recent show; a story he accidentally left out from his talk, that has to do with searching for enlightenment; buying a piece of land in the canyons of Malibu, which became an education in native plants and paying attention to the landscape (his wife is now a landscape designer emphasizing native plants); and how the person he’d like to emulate is not an artist but rather a zen master or the like, someone who lives as fully as possible.
Altadena (in L.A. County)-based artist James Griffith talks about:
Discovering the town of Altadena, where they first bought a house, and then a studio building, formerly Altadena’s fire house, back in 1999, and fixing them both up from tear-down conditions; being connected to nature while also being in the city, and not ever buying into owning a cell/mobile phone (although he does use an iPod, which he can text with); having renters in both the converted garage at their home, and in a section of their studio building, providing he and his wife with more freedom to make their art without needing ‘the monthly nut;’ working with tar as his primary medium, which he’s done for well over a decade and gotten a lot of mileage from one 5-gallon bucket of the stuff; and his and his wife’s decorative/faux finish painting business, which his wife launched in the 80s, and allowed them to buy their fixer upper house and studio building.
San Francisco-based artist Sarah Thibault talks about:
How she’s the last artist in S.F., or at least so it seems; a ghost encounter she experienced in Edinburgh (Scotland), as well as her engaging in Tarot cards and other new-age spiritual pursuits, largely as a byproduct of the pandemic; her experiences going to a range of artist residencies, from remote ones with just a couple fellow residents in Portugal, to a more professionalized one at Plop in London; the Minnesota Street Project, a subsidized artist studio and gallery complex in SF where Sarah has a long-term lease at ‘below-market rate,’ and the barriers for entry there; her transition from working in executive assistant jobs to becoming a recruiter; and we talk about my concerns about Sarah’s giving me a tarot reading (and spoiler: we eventually do one in a bonus episode to come).
Freelance art writer (often for the New York Times) and past guest royalty Andrew Russeth talks about:
Why he moved to Seoul, South Korea, where he’s expanded his freelance writing opportunities; a book on Chris Burden’s unrealized sculpture projects, which he wrote about for the New York Times- the book includes a one-stop pneumatic subway under the Gagosian gallery; artists using assistants, and the optics that go along with the various levels of production that certain artists employ, for us as viewers of their work; the art scene(s) and community in greater Seoul, which has a metropolitan population of 25 million, nearly half that of the whole country of South Korea; the vast artist-run gallery scene in Seoul; how some of the trends in Korean contemporary art overlap with international contemporary art, including airbrushed figuration, humor, and meme culture; and last but not least, Andrew holds forth on South Korea’s incredible food and drink culture (including Bibimbap and soju), which has been heaven for him.
with Fernando Domínguez Rubio, author of Still Life: Ecologies of the Modern Imagination at the Art Museum, he talks about: Storage- how much it takes to maintain it; how museum curators put the longevity of artworks in the context of geological time, when thinking about ‘eternity,’ and how exhibition rooms in museums are effectively ICUs for the art- conditions must be monitored and controlled carefully, because humans, just by their organic natures, are an immediate threat to artworks’ longevity; how exhibition rooms in museums are highly mediated spaces by exhibition designers to control viewers’ experiences; the complex logistics and mimeographic labor that goes into the maintenance of artworks within the museum- where and whether they get loaned, get exhibited, etc.; Fernando’s own experience of violence when he first encountered contemporary art, because, as is the case for most individuals, he didn’t have the grammar for reading the exhibition room; how his working class background, and change in classes as an adult, has informed his focus on the invisible labor at the museum, as opposed to its ‘celebrities;’ and how exhibition spaces have been “conquered for a suspension of common sense.”
In part 2 with Fernando Domínguez Rubio, a professor of communications at UCSD and author of Still Life: Ecologies of the Modern Imagination at the Art Museum, he talks about:
The astonishing resources that go into some museum artworks, starting with David Lamelas’s conceptual installation “Office,” which MoMA bought and decided to reproduce, but were reproducing an installation that no longer existed, and yet they did everything they could to be true to the original piece, based only off photographs; the ‘modern aesthetic regime of art,’ and how art that once rebelled against museums and museum inclusion – was anti-institution – is now embracing as many angles of commodification as it (via the artist) can; the savvy machinations of the artist Tino Seghal; and, as part of our discussion of art words and conservation-based artist interviews, we play out a MoMA interview with the artist James Rosenquist, which raises one of Rubio’s big questions: “what is a museum-- is it not a necessary absurdity?”
In the first of several parts with Fernando Domínguez Rubio, a professor of communications at UCSD and author of Still Life: Ecologies of the Modern Imagination at the Art Museum, he talks about:
How he got started with the massive eight-year project of this book, beginning with his post-doctoral thesis interviewing numerous people who work at the Museum of Modern Art; how he gained entry into the museum (hint: via the Conservation dept.); the hidden labor that’s done at the museum, as part of something he calls “mimeographic labor,” a process to make objects of ‘the same;’ how most art in the world is in storage – it isn’t seen art – which is definitively the case for museums; how much invisible labor goes into what visitors see in a museum, and to what extent that labor, spread around various parts of the museum and its numerous artworks, is sustainable.
In this guest-less episode, we ( that is to say 'I') talk about: a new OPEN CALL for future guests of this podcast; the opening reception and the show 'It's My House!,' a group show in Ojai that I'm in; and numerous recent excerpts from Jeff Weiss's OLD NEWS, including stories about the Sacklers' name being taken off institutions, the Waste Museum in Nigeria, the indictment of the (former) sales director for Superblue, and the recently passed auteur Nick Zedd, among other recent art news. It's all capped with a very short story about the Pearlfish, which can be seen here: https://tinyurl.com/yatcyrdq
In Part 2 with writer Gabrielle Selz, author of Light on Fire: The Art and Life of Sam Francis, we talk about Sam Francis as he:
Settles into his compound at West Channel Road in Santa Monica, and became the big-man-on-campus of the young (1960s) L.A. art scene; his relative absence as a father, his kids being left to run wild or spend time with Sam’s assistants; Sam’s self-empowered and grandiose painting process which included his mantra, “I am an Original” as he began to paint; the profound impact that his fifth (and final) wife, Margaret, had on Sam’s life, because of the way she corralled Sam off from the large and freely flowing group of friends who came in and out of the house(s), as well as how she enabled Sam’s adherence to bogus alternative medicine when he was suffering from cancer; the Dream Machines of his studios in the works, including many compounds simultaneously in development in northern California towards the end of his life; the resolution of his complicated Estate, including a contested will by his last wife; and where one might find Sam Francis paintings these days.
about: the important first phase of Sam’s long art career, in Paris, where he started working on a big painting from his bed in a tiny hotel room he shared with his girlfriend Muriel; how he was a shrewd businessman and cocky self-promoter, a sort of Orson Welles of the art world; how his first patron, Franz Meyer Sr., told Sam he would buy anything he made, thus freeing Sam and bolstering his confidence and security; how Sam wasn’t tied to place (he was constantly traveling and living in different countries), nor to style; and how lucrative Sam’s career was, including having bank accounts (including Swiss) all over the world, and his philosophy that money flowed through you, and that you should spend it.
In part 2 of 2 with Los Angeles-based painter Sydney Croskery, she talks about:
connecting with a gallerist -- who has come to represent her – on Instagram, synchronistically; the benefits and travails of her day job as a server, which can be very intense, and could make for a whole other episode; her “Failure CV,” which accompanies the traditional CV on her website, and how in addition to being self-deprecating, has also been empowering; and as a final grab bag topic, Sydney wonders why there are a number of artists who want their work to have no meaning whatsoever (if you know of an example of such work, please reach out and let me know; Sydney didn’t want to call anyone out).
In part 1 of 2 with Los Angeles-based painter Sydney Croskery, she talks about:
transitioning from representation to abstraction during pandemic lockdown; transitional imagery which included using buffering Instagram screen shots as a source for her painting; making it OK when things are ‘wrong’ in the painting, part of a mandate of being nice to herself; her ambivalent relationship with abstract painting and being an abstract painter, and how she’s navigating that conflict; and her effectiveness telling stories and connecting with artists and other art world folks on Instagram.
In part 2 of 2 with multi-hyphenate and Artist Decoded host Yoshino, he talks about:
Working through an art-like writing phase, in which he does a mix of automatic writing and poetry, as a counterpoint to his existential crises; NohWave, the gallery in Little Tokyo that he ran with fellow multi-hyphenate Justin Hopkins, and how he saw it as a way of giving back to the community by creating community, citing Sir Isaac Newton’s “I see further because I stand on the shoulder of giants…;” letting go of a competitive mindset as an artist, podcaster and even gallerist- his approach to running NohWave was experimental, thanks largely to a sweet deal given by their landlord; why he stopped doing commercial cinematography; and how for now he’s able to work on his art, his podcast and related projects thanks to a little cryptocurrency investment and a lower cost of living in Joshua Tree.
In the 1st of two episodes, visual artist, writer, entrepreneur and host of the Artist Decoded podcast, Yoshino talks about: how he shortened his name to the iconic ‘Yoshino,’ thanks to an existential crisis involving leaving the commercial and fashion photography world for the fine art world; doing Brazilian Ju jitsu, Muay Thai, and boxing on a professional level; how he identifies himself, and what being an ‘artist’ means in his case, how as an artist you want to be fluid, which runs counter to capitalist realities; growing up Christian, and his current spiritual place (a spiritually open-minded individual who doesn't have any answers (!)); his move to Joshua Tree, partially due to the spiritual wokeness of LA, and his desire to process information outside of the noisy machinations of Los Angeles.
Antonio Murado, a New York City-based painter originally from Spain, talks about:
His background in Spain, including several years in the Madrid art scene, before moving to NYC, which he began with a Spanish grant; the commissions that he’s done- how they function as competitions, and then if he gets one, a collaboration with the client, rather than the sort of top-down dynamic that came across in his depiction in Hannah Wohl’s ‘Bound by Creativity;’ the importance of the art agent in setting up a commission; how competing for a commission is like an actor casting for a role; how the sales of his work rise and fall, not only by year but by month, which means there’s no stability; and his time in the studio (around 65-70 hours/week)- how he spends his days there, and how he takes an old-school craftsman approach, from sizing canvas with rabbit-skin glue to building his own stretchers.
In the final episode with Hannah Wohl (Bound by Creativity), we talk about: her experiences with mega-collector couple Sherry and Joel Mallin, who have an impressive collection and are known as being philanthropic in their approach to helping artists, including having some of them live in their homes; a purchase the Mallins made that entailed their flying from New York to London just so they could see the (six-figure) work they were considering in person before committing fully to the purchase, and how people’s reactions to this anecdote are something of a Rorschach test for where they’re coming from; the issues of inequality that being around collectors inevitably brings up; her brief history of being a (modest) art collector herself; and finally, in comparing contemporary art with the arts at large (the culinary arts, musicians, actors, etc.), she describes the ‘radical uncertainty’ that goes along with it, how the artists and the art world make decisions within this uncertainty, and the narratives that artists bound themselves within.
In my penultimate conversation with sociologist Hannah Wohl (author of Bound by Creativity) she talks about: the cynicism of sociologists, particularly when theorizing about art (and in relation to the sculptor St. Clair Cemin in particular); the emergence of the artist Ginny Casey, through her show at Half Gallery; how she describes her own contemporary art sensibility (like most of us: with difficulty), including her appreciation of Wong Ping’s show at the New Museum, and in turn demonstrates the challenges of talking, and writing about art, even for a sociologist who’s written a book about contemporary art; and she begins recounting her experience ‘playing’ a gallery assistant at an art fair (as an unpaid volunteer) for the purpose of her sociological research).
In The Conversation’s latest Virtual Café (which took place on 9/24/21, on Zoom), special guest Rose Bricetti and participants talked about: how memes break down institutional critique; the Instagram account Jerry Gogosian, which was revealed to be run by Hilde (former guest of the podcast); The Dirtbag Left, defined, as well as their use of memes; how the image and meaning of Pepe the frog has changed over time, depending on who appropriates it and how the media covers those appropriations; Rose’s art-making process, which has been influenced both by memes and her prior work as a museum designer at a natural history museum; her consumption of Tik Tok vs. her consumption of Instagram, and how the two compare content-wise; and how the leisurely and the political are so intertwined in memes that they’re inseparable.
In part 4 of my conversations with sociologist Hannah Wohl (author of Bound by Creativity), we discuss:
Competing claims to expertise between artists and gallerists; the fiduciary responsibilities that some art advisors take on, which involves a very pointed analysis of artists’ pedigrees when choosing work for their clients; how art advisors and collectors operate in such a way that perpetuates systems of value based on status signals; how Hannah tries to strike a good balance as an ethnographer, in between being an objective, invisible researcher on one hand, vs. it being too much about the ethnographer’s ego on the other hand (and that balanced approach also applies to her take on the art world); and Antonio Murado, a painter who has produced highly-paid commissions for corporate banks, and in the process grappled with issues around selling out and compromising his work, or, in Hannah’s research terms, he was willing to trod on his creative vision and in the process potentially relegate his work to a lower status level, based on the perception of doing the commissions.
In digging into Hannah’s book, ‘Bound by Creativity,’ we talk about: the continued existence of the artist as bohemian (even as ‘enfant terrible’), as personified by the pseudonymous Simon Moser, whose gallerist and collectors affectionately boast about how crazy he is, and yet who occasionally goes to far, even with his cultural clout; the collector-artist dynamic in studio visits, where a power imbalance is the norm, and collectors are often hesitant to buy work by an artist who they haven’t already invested in; collectors’ light-hearted competition with each other, not unlike a catty teenager style of play; trust-fund kids, and how artists often adopt bohemian lifestyles (or at least appearances) so as not to be seen as having or coming from wealth, whereas collectors coming from wealth tend not to hide that fact; and the uneasiness artists often feel in their direct relations with collectors.
Here is a related discussion, about ‘the Anxieties of Affluence,’ with sociologist Rachel Sherman, from my other podcast How I Get By.
In part 2 with sociologist Hannah Wohl, we continue our conversation by talking about whether the terms ‘Creative Vision,’ or ‘Signature Style,’ are euphemisms for ‘brand’; how there was resistance (from artists in the book and others) to the prospect of Hannah using a sociological model to analyze patterns of creativity, something that struck them as anathema to their unique visions and processes; the relative importance of the art world, in that it moves the conversation(s) forward, even as an admittedly collector-supported system; how cultural consumption tends to reinforce the status of the elites, rather than undercut it; and what the big difference is between trust-fund baby collectors and trust-fund artists (hint: one gets to be more transparent, the other has to hide their background).
In the first part of a multi-part series, Hannah Wohl, sociologist and author of Bound by Creativity talks about: her general studies of the creative industries more broadly, in addition to her focus, for this book, on the contemporary art market in particular; her two-year ethnography of a ‘sensual figure drawing’ class at an erotic arts club in Chicago; how she earned entry into some of the inner sanctums of the art world, starting with artists but then eventually through the support and generosity of one legendary gallerist; the process of artists developing a signature style for which they become known; and the challenges for artists with a recognizable ‘creative vision’ who try to transition into another style and/or medium, largely because collectors want to buy the work that represents a given artist’s creative vision.
New York artist and writer Melissa Stern talks about:
Living in a large Chelsea co-op apartment where also has her studio, in a building she calls ‘a community in a box’; her joining an all-women-artist text group during the pandemic, which has been a great source of support and community; her shows that got canceled because of the pandemic, one of which got re-scheduled, and disappeared by ghosting; going down a dark rabbit hole with a couple of bogus dealers – one of whom was a meth-head – and how that led to, among other things, a great experience among a wide assortment of New Yorkers at Small Claims Court (it also led to a great article on Hyperallergic); her piece ‘The Talking Cure,’ which is a collaboration with 12 writers, 12 actors and 12 sculptors (and will be shown at the Fuller Museum in 2022), and has presented great opportunities to both interact and connect with audience members in parts of the country outside of her New York area bubble.
In addition to being a replay of episode 138, from May of 2021, art writer Ben Davis also provides an update on what he thinks about art and activism today, in conjunction with his new book, 'Culture Collapse.'
In this episode, Ben talks about:
His time in Australia at the (x) conference, and his meetings with artist Ben Quilty (also a social activist work); art and activism, and art & politics; the mutually incompatible art tribes that exist among the different 'art worlds;' how the fact that all the different complaints from various factions of the art world(s) can all be true at once, and how disorienting that can be (for Ben); how outside of the cities where there's a market, the conversation is almost always about social aesthetics (what Ben calls "social practice") instead, and how that's where government arts support tends to gravitate; how some of the most interesting art – art that's 'underground and weird' - is being made outside of the art world bubble, among them Fee Plumley, an artist based in Adelaide; sections from his book "9.5 Theses on Art and Class" -- the title and also a specific chapter of his book which was originally written as a pamphlet and intervention of an art show in NY on art and class – including trickle-down theories of both economics and art; and art education, and particularly what for Ben was a profoundly moving article: A Eulogy for Hope: The Silent Murder of Gallery 37 ; what explains the fact that grad schools are made up of 2/3 women, but galleries represent 1/3 women…what happened in between?; what the mechanisms are that make up the art world/how it works; his piece "Do you have to be rich to make it as an artist?"; how the conversation about the art market is a complete dead end; how cities with much smaller art markets, but much cheaper housing, are better for artists; and how without the writing, without the intellectual circulation around the production of art, art's just an overpriced piece of decoration.
Brooklyn-based artist Doug Beube talks about: his internship with photographer Minor White; photographing the circus, and later freelance gigs to make a living and support his art-making, including verité photos of John Kennedy, Jr.; doing cedar logging salvage in British Columbia; his journey from Ontario to New York, and eventually getting his Green Card; why he stopped doing commercial photography; buying the brownstone he now lives in, rents out, and Airbnbs in 1998 as a form of retirement; and the art of pulling apart books and repurposing them into objects.
Sharon Butler, NYC Artist and creator and publisher of Two Coats of Paint, talks about:
Leaving a tenured teaching position in Connecticut so she could get back to the action in NYC; the origins of Two Coats of Paint, her illustrious blogazine, which was born out of her interest in painting and following painting-focused writers and bloggers around the country, and evolved from being an extension of her painting into a full-fledged digital magazine that involves multiple contributing writers; how she considers herself a lifelong DIY-er, and has made it a point to cover the galleries in Brooklyn, the types of spaces that don’t get coverage in the mainstream publications; the mini-art movement that Sharon wrote about and essentially coined, Casualism; and how much having a permanent studio (for her, a three-year lease was huge), versus being a studio nomad, affected the type paintings she made.
This episode is supported by the podcast Wireframe. Please check out their podcast- we think you’ll enjoy it, plus subscribing to Wireframe is a way for you to support The Conversation!
Los Angeles artist Jennifer Moon talks about: getting sober after a long string of drug use benders; navigating ambitions for revolution with a traditional artist career path, including her inclusion in the 2014 version of Made in L.A., which led to sales and accolades; how her commercial success – and the connection of an artist she was working for – eventually led to the security of a professorship at Otis, where she attempts to lobby for changes in the power structures; how, before her career broke, she thought she might give up art and become a therapist (she had been doing a lot of mediation with several organizations already; and a bit about her work with Revolution School, including the theory of ‘Scrooging’ and tackling collective trauma.
Los Angeles-based artist Rakeem Cunningham talks about: growing up in essentially a small town (Pacoima) within Los Angeles, where he still lives and works out of a custom-built studio under his bedroom (though he’ll be moving out soon); his day job as the gallery manager for Gavlak in Downtown L.A., work which he really appreciates, and where he especially enjoys being a warm and welcoming host to black visitors to the gallery; how he started working in self-portraiture in lieu of hanging out with friends, and how it became a form of self-love as well as a way put his work out there via Flickr and Tumblr, before the Instagram era; and how he navigates photographing himself nude while avoiding fetishism and objectification.
Law school professor, former general counsel for Pepsico, and novelist (most recently of The Forger’s Forgery) Clay Small talks about: visiting Amsterdam’s notorious Six Collection, which he was only able to do through creative means (largely through this article), and what the experience was like; art forgery, particularly European forgers of the 20th century- what they got away with, and how they largely avoided prosecution by cultivating charming personas, which ultimately led to their being forgiven in the public (and legal) arena; and his consequential and bizarre visit to Michael Jackson’s compound, in working on the contract negotiation for Jackson’s concert tour at the time.
Toronto-based conceptual artist Mitchell Chan talks about his epic “Digital Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility,” a blockchain-based work which was inspired by Yves Klein’s late 1950s precursor, “Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility;” we talk about Klein’s legendary work The Void, the apex of his ongoing project of making invisible, or nearly invisible, artworks, and how his revolutionary work may have been interpreted at the time; and we talk about the NFT (non-fungible token) market- how it’s helped his Digital Zones work, how a lot of great conceptual work has been made on blockchain, even if it’s not dominating the marketplace… and his philosophical take on the NFT trend from the perspective of an artist who’s been working in blockchain for at least the last five years.
Artist, choreographer and former ballet dancer Madeline Hollander talks about her brief but dramatic professional ballet career and her subsequent transition into becoming a visual artist via choreography and performance; her project Flatwing, a search for the elusive silent/chirp-less crickets on the island of Kauai, which led to a deep dive into evolutionary biology and a video that’s being exhibited as part of an installation at the Whitney Museum; the turning points that led to her being included in the Whitney Biennial and now to have this solo exhibition at the museum; the pros and cons of working in the still-nascent niche of dance/choreography in contemporary art; and how the decision to invest in the Masters program at Bard College has already paid off.
Berlin-based artist Lee Wagstaff talks about his paintings and his recent career boost through his use of the Artist Support Pledge (#artistsupportpledge) platform-- how he learned of it, his strategies in using it, and how the smaller paintings he’s been making are an ideal format for it. The Support Pledge has also provided him with artistic/financial independence, without having to rely on networking (something he’s averse to), and how he’s turned it into a sustainable living; he also talks about how he makes his optical-yet-visceral paintings, which involve a proprietary process that even his painter friends can figure out.
In the 2nd of two parts, artist Katarina Wong talks about: her collective +1 +1, which fosters artist community serendipitously based on a non-competitive ethos, with sharing small works as an ice breaker; our shifting priorities since the pandemic, and our approach to FOMO and guilt when it comes to seeing, or not seeing, everything that’s out there; re-directing our focus on what we do throughout the day (including art making), so that instead of checking off boxes, we’re being intentional about our decisions, and not including the word “Should” as part of those decisions; working on her memoir about renovating an apartment she bought in Havana, which has brought her closer to relatives, while otherwise she struggles with feeling like an impostor for not fitting into any of her respective cultures, whether Cuban (her mom), Chinese (her dad’s Chinese), or even American, despite growing up in Florida.
Host Michael Shaw speaks with Katerina Wong, a New York City-based artist, curator, and writer (among other things), about working her way up to VP of Curatorial Engagement, a position she invented for herself at the corporate communications company where she worked for over a decade; getting good at managing her (limited) time in the studio with a full-time job; the pluses and minuses of teaching, in particular tenure-track positions; going back to school for a masters in theological studies at Harvard, and how she wound up there; how we’re conditioned to make work for an audience, as opposed to having, as Katarina calls it, “pure dialogue” with just the work itself; and we begin talking about the art scene in Cuba, including its misconceptions, which will continue in greater depth in part 2.
Curator, writer and museum director Laura Raicovich talks about the challenges she faced as director of the Queens Museum, particularly around actively addressing the vulnerability of many Queens residents during the Trump era, including meeting some resistance from some the museum’s board members. She also discusses issues around diversity and where museums need to be moving, topics she’s addressed in her upcoming book, “Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest.” We also discuss the controversy around the postponed Philip Guston retrospective, and the various projects she’s taking on as her run as a museum director winds down.
Artist, writer and art world worker Robin Kasier-Schatzlein talks with Michael Shaw and several listeners in the podcast's latest Virtual Cafe. Robin talks about his 'mini-memoir' from The New Republic titled "The Artist Isn't Dead: Eulogies for the creative class are premature. Art workers can organize—and survive," partially a book review of Shannon Clark's "The Making of The American Creative Class: New York’s Culture Workers and Twentieth-century Consumer Capitalism," and partly an introduction to Robin. In the Conversation via the Cafe, which features several listeners in the Q&A, Robin expands on his own experience being an artist, a writer (he has a newsletter, a twitter feed, and a Patreon page all worth checking out), and working in the art world as a preparator, and organizing with his colleagues at MoMA PS1, where he's the shop steward.
Michael Shaw talks to Miriam Basilio about her job at MOMA curating Latin American Art, helping to integrate the curatorial landscape as a woman from Puerto Rico, low curatorial salaries, her current work at NYU as a tenured professor, her annual 6-week stints in Spain and the Spanish art community, her forthcoming book, and the importance of representation in the art world.
English artist Matthew Burrows - founder of Artist Support Pledge, number 37 in ART REVIEW’S Power 100 list 2020, and 2020 Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) - talks about building his studio in East Sussex, and why he left London; the perils of ultra-marathoning, including facing his fears (and getting hypothermia); his artist Support Pledge- how and why he started it, its successes, and how it has provided him with a full-time income thru the sales of his works; he also talks about how to set up your own Support Pledge, and who sells well on it and why.
For the end-of-year holidays we're re-running our fantastic conversation with Carolina A. Miranda of the L.A. Times, which originally ran as episode 110 back in 2015. In addition to a new tighter edit of that original episode, we also share two 'Words of the Year of Little Importance," and read a brief, art-world-relevant passage from "My Year of Rest and Relaxation" by Ottessa Moshfegh. In that original conversation, we talked about: her philosophy and approach as an arts journalist; the issues around race brought up in her piece on the Donelle Woodford/Joe Scanlon Whitney Biennial scandal; her posts that went viral, including breaking the story that Hello Kitty is not a cat; as well as stories on a velvet painting museum, and a pool in the middle of the desert. Carolina also makes her world debut reading of "Jeff Koons Cut-Up Poem," culled from the many flowery-worded articles about his retrospective.
Colleen Hargaden discusses her exploration of subcultures and how to live sustainably, and even potentially survive as our climate changes and we move closer to apocalypse. These subcultures involve doomsday prepping, DIY culture, and tiny house culture, which she says focus too much on self-sustainability when they need to be more about communal sustainability. She also discusses how she’s drawn to the open-ended aspects of making fine art, as opposed to something that’s practical. She also breaks down the former life of Roger’s Office, an artist-run space co-founded by her and her partner. As a special bonus addendum, the episode concludes with Hargaden’s experience with “100-person crits” during grad school.
In The Conversation’s first guest-featured Virtual Café – our once every few weeks gathering with fellow listeners on Zoom - former guest of the podcast (epis. 152 and 153) Nato Thompson talks about “the Indignation.” He riffs on how our emotional space, the space of the personal, becomes a political space... and how in that emotional space, the things that get the most traction are the things that provoke the most emotion. He points out that our biggest emotion- fear - is the modality of the internet, and how most internet chatter takes the form of social media- which has, ultimately, become our political discourse. He also talks his departure from the Philadelphia Contemporary (and nonprofits), and his new post directing the Alternative Art School, and ends with a great anecdote about his turning point towards becoming a curator.
In Part 2 with artist Steve Lambert, he discusses his most well-known artwork, Capitalism Works For Me, wherein he prompts participants to decide between “true” and “false” on whether capitalism really works for them on a personal level. Lambert himself says “false”, it doesn’t work for him, despite being in a better position than others and lists reasons why within the episode. He also weighs his career making more gallery-friendly art with his art for social change, and how he’s ultimately come down on the latter. His social change work thru the Center Artistic Activism was just featured on CBS News: https://c4aa.org/2020/10/cbs-this-morning-on-unstoppable-voters
Beacon, NY-based artist and professor Steve Lambert talks about the perils of working in ‘new media’ (as opposed to ‘old media’), particularly around scarcity and the market. He discusses the Center for Artistic Activism, the non-profit he co- founded, including a project in Macedonia that addressed the rampant corruption with a "Bribe Box," a clever workaround for illegal protesting in Barcelona, and training artist-activists in actually achieving ‘wins,’ unambivalently, and the complex relationships between art and activism and how they can come together.
Michelle Vaughan discusses her life as an artist in New York City, pre- and during the pandemic, including living and working out of her Chinatown apartment. She dives deep into her heavily research-based process as seen in projects including Generations, which examined inbreeding among the Habsurgs family of 16th and 17th century Europe. She also discusses at length her current show up in Bushwick, called A Movement of Women, which features a full gallery installation detailing the history of conservative women in America over the last 100 years, through a research nook and numerous portraits.
Los Angeles artist Alicia Piller talks about gradually moving westward, winding up at Cal Arts for her MFA after being charmed during her interview visit. Her time in grad school is described as being a close-knit community where she also was really able to push herself. She discusses her post-grad breakdown, being driven to create without choice, the lessons she learned from having a solo show with a shady gallerist, and selling a big sculpture to the Hammer Museum.
Senior Editor for Hyperallergic and New York Times regular contributor Seph Rodney talks about his long journey to becoming a full-time art critic. As an undergrad he was an English Major, before moving on to an MFA that would deepen his storytelling abilities, and then to his PhD. The road has been long and tumultuous with financial struggle much of the way, getting by with the help of friends, family, and, on one occasion, a tech billionaire. Rodney talks about his current place in the art world, the principles that guide his pen and his mind, “threading the needle,” elitism in the art world, American culture’s White Supremacist foundation, and winning the 2020 Rabkin Art Journalism Prize. Rodney says that when it comes to writing, he “does not aspire to be unbiased but, rather, aspires to be upfront and honest about his biases.”
Greg Allen expands on a thought from Part 1: “selling baubles of the anointed few to the billionaire class.” He proves this is true through what he calls the “naked stratification” of museum galas, the epitome of “art or art-like things done for a tiny audience that either bought their way in or control an institution.” Even with a global pandemic wreaking havoc throughout the United States, Galas are still taking place over Zoom with elaborate catering delivered to your door. Allen contemplates where to shift away from this, especially in light of upcoming museum closures. He also discusses moving from his adopted home of New York to D.C., his resistance to hyping up the “market darlings,” and his wish-list artists as a collector.
Host Michael Shaw reviews some of artist and cultural critic Greg Allen’s tweet history, providing the opportunity to deconstruct some of his cultural criticisms, including a defense of Cady Noland; Allen also talks about his ability to speak Japanese, thanks to his Mormon mission, leaving the corporate world for film-making and the art world, and becoming something of an art world (and contemporary art) expert without an MFA, but instead by simply putting in the time.
Artists Till Witwer and Netta Sadovsky discuss the art of creating, facilitating and executing a live action role-playing game--by artists, for artists. This isn’t your standard ogre-in-the-woods, dressing up as a knight with a sword in the middle of nowhere kind of LARP-ing, but rather a fully immersive investigation of the career-building workshop format. With alternately paralyzing, cathartic, and surprising outcomes, Witwer and Sadovsky are interested in discovering what stands between artists and “The Great Success Machine.”
Forrest Kirk is a figurative painter based in Los Angeles; as this episode releases, he has a sold-out show at Parrasch Heijnen gallery. In the Conversation, Kirk doesn’t back away from describing the pressure the art world has placed on Black creators to make “Black Art.” He also talks about his living room-studio setup; discusses collecting -- both as a collector and an artist being collected; his experience in the art world as a black man and a painter; and he lets us in on part of how he's risen to success in the art world within just four years.
Ayana Evans discusses her 7-year career as a fashion designer (between being a painter and a performance artist), her impressive endurance-based performances, being part of a community of performance artists who are all on the same playing field (unlike the hierarchical art worlds), her first experiment/performance, in which she walked around MoMA in her signature catsuit while a friend covertly filmed (mostly) white women taking pictures of her exploitatively, and her frustrations and struggles with justice for black artists and women of color at large.
Nomadic curator Kate Mothes of Young Space talks about the pros and cons of curating shows in pop-up spaces; how as a curator she's always wanted to be part of an artist's community, the bottleneck of younger artists trying to get their work out into the world, and how she's built Young Space into a major virtual gallery platform - especially on Instagram - that many galleries pay attention to, and sometimes even borrow from.
Joanne Greenbaum talks about her time in Berlin, being one of the few young artists of her time to have a full-time day job, showing up for friend’s art shows but intentionally not having an extensive art world network beyond that, being able to live off of her work, the exhausting parts of being an adjunct professor, the hellscape that is being a mid-career female artist, and her steadfast belief that not everything has been done, especially within Abstraction.
In part two, Brooklyn-based artist and activist William Powhida talks about the ivory tower syndrome that accompanies working at an ivy-league institution, his project Store-To-Own, which allows people to store his work in their home for free under contract, his exhibition After The Contemporary, which satirizes life after contemporary art, his ongoing critique of the art world and its service to and for the ultra wealthy, and the 'Dirtbag left,' which promotes left-wing politics through vulgarity and online attacks.
Brooklyn-based artist and co-host of the Explain Me podcast talks about the highs and lows of being the art world court jester (including alienating art world players along the way), what it’s like when your visibility as an artist dissipates, our various complicities in an art world that’s tied to tremendous wealth, and how activism, even in art, relies on activating the media to accomplish its objectives…
Central California artist and professor Elizabeth Folk discusses the pros and cons of online higher education during the boom of Zoom. Folk also touches on performance art, being able to access it virtually through Instagram Live, as well as performing a little piece live, here, on the podcast.
Danielle Baskin discusses how being an artist and app developer has, now more than ever, helped her create experiences and fulfill the needs of her patrons. Her latest projects include: a platform called ‘Quarantine Chat’ that pairs callers with random people all over the world, addressing facial recognition technology challenges via personalization, tarot readings and spells over the phone.
This episode of The Conversation we discuss the profile of artist Jordan Wolfson in the March 16 issue of The New Yorker magazine by Dana Goodyear, which in part follows a thread Deb and I talked about in a recent episode about social justice and censorship in contemporary art; because neither of us have actually experienced Wolfson’s work in person, we focus on the story arc of Wolfson’s career as portrayed in the piece, as well as the context in which the art has been received; in remarking on the way Wolfson’s work has been described as capturing certain sensibilities of the internet, Deb says that “so much of internet culture is like a different kind of internalized road rage;” Deb talks a bit about the Netflix movie Velvet Buzzsaw, in which Wolfson’s work is quoted; and we wrap things up by discussing the phenomenon of artists who are ‘cranking work out,’ including when they say ‘no’ when asked for greater production, when it makes sense to make that extra work for vital art fair opportunities, and being grateful for being on the ‘carousel’ (as Deb calls it) in the first place.
In this Covid-19 special of The Conversation, Deb Klowden Mann and I talk about:
Our respective experiences with the pandemic, including lots of cons but a few pros as well, and how she’s sheltering-in-place more strictly due to health vulnerabilities; Deb’s experience coming back from the Armory art fair in New York as a surgical-masked traveler, and bonding with another woman who was even more geared for the pandemic; our prescriptions for limiting/avoiding internet and especially TV news for health’s sake; our respective challenges with rent, especially Deb’s in light of her having not only a substantial commercial rent but payroll as well to maintain, all while sales having come to a halt; and some perspectives on moving through this new world as a community, and gracefully.
Brooklyn-based artist and adjunct professor Alex Strada talks about:
Why she makes specialized artist’s contracts even though her own work tends not to be object-oriented, which is a feminist-based approach to addressing inequities in the art market; her great admiration for Mark Dion, the artist and her former teacher who has always credited everyone that has worked for him; her various adjunct teaching gigs, at Columbia, Fordham, Cooper Union and Studio in a School; the socially engaged tendency of the work of her students, which she acknowledges comes out of her syllabi emphasizing diversity of all kinds; her film project “Save the Presidents:” how she and her collaborator were able to shoot these immense sculptural busts, which are eroding on a private field owned by the busts’ purveyor, how the screening of the film in Times Square, as part of the Midnight Moments project, was the most surreal experience of Strada’s life; and her life and citizenry as a native New Yorker who grew up in the West Village and still cherishes that neighborhood, but could never live there now – only Julianne Moore can, as she put it – and how the Chelsea gallery system, with rents so high, perpetuates an art world that has to play it safe in order to survive, and how we as individual artists need to fight for our opportunities and our space.
Bay Area co-director of Art+Action, head of AK Art Advisory and former Sotheby’s gatekeeper Amy Kisch talks about :
Her organizing work to bring awareness to the Census in the San Francisco Bay Area, through various partnerships with organizations and artists, as her favorite hybrid of art and social justice coming together; her time working at Sotheby’s auction house in New York, first in the proposals division, followed by running Sotheby’s Preferred, their VIP program for top clients, which put her in a sort of ‘bouncer’ role; why she thinks her friends who have stayed at Sotheby’s have chosen to do so, whereas for Amy, having come from a social work background, it just wasn’t going to be a long-term fit; differences she’s encountering living in the Bay Area compared with the much more market-centric New York, where there’s much more “drafting FOMO” guiding how people collect; her love for the Bay Area, and yet her significant awareness of both the housing crisis and the homeless crisis, which she calls ‘post-apocalyptic.'
Interim co-host Deb Klowden Mann, a gallerist based in Culver City, and I talk about:
Why I continue to do the show and the desire for and challenge of finding a permanent co-host; Gen-X, and how Gen-Xers and social media don’t mix well together; the Twitter storm that Deb got caught in after a high-profile individual came to her gallery and didn’t receive the glad-handing they thought they were entitled to; my ambition to make Hyperallergic’s “Least Powerful People in the Art World” list, and the relative power of a platform; Deb does a little business, with one of her colleagues, via text on air to give us a taste of a day in the life of a gallerist, and later she explains what it’s like working with a large roster of artists and how she and her team are engaged in addressing a range of needs depending on the artist; social justice today in terms of censorship; the difference between DJs who ‘curate’ music and curators who curate art; and L.A.’s mid-February art fair week, and what Deb’s activity (her gallery has a booth at Art Los Angeles Contemporary, aka ALAC) will look like, and what it’s like for her.
Painter and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo professor Sara Frantz talks about :
Photographing the landscape in Texas and in Iceland, and surprisingly what they have in common; her unusual marriage-divorce-remarriage scenario that coincided with her getting a teaching job at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo; how she’s juggling motherhood (with a toddler and baby on the way shortly) in relation to the studio, and navigating doing schematics for her future work while keeping it fresh and not overly tight; the various ‘sketchy’ things she’s been told, as a woman and an artist, including that you shouldn’t have kids if you want to be taken seriously/have a real career…a male professor even told her she shouldn’t wear makeup for her oral review presentation; she also worried about becoming too visibly pregnant would scare away potential gallery relationships; how the painter Alice Neel was the example of the artist who was an absent parent; what it meant to her, and to her parents, when she came home with her first tattoo; and she talks about the kinds of students in grad school (at U. Texas) who didn’t pass their orals, and the kinds – like her – who did, because they had the grit that it takes to be an artist. .
L.A. artist and co-director of Tiger Strikes Asteroid Los Angeles Carl Baratta talks about:
Moving to L.A. from Chicago, to get away from the cold but also to tap into a broader art scene; the kind of art scene he’s building through the TSA L.A. (and some of the other galleries in the Bendix building downtown), one that’s more socialist-oriented in style and tone, compared with the commercial model, and how he feels more connected to this model as a ‘human being;’ the various logistics around TSA including membership dues, budget, how they recruit members and how he’s trying to grow the collective through international exchanges; how he’s learned as much about himself in the last 5 years being part of TSA LA than his whole life prior to that, thanks to self-reflection and learning to see things from others’ points of view; how important ‘appreciation’ is in his model of gallery/artist’s space; and the history and origins of his last name, which not only means ‘inexpensive’ in Italian, there’s also a story about horses for sale.
The Conversation is seeking a co-host for the podcast- to switch gears and tweak the format. It is also the perfect opportunity to talk with several past and current contributors to the show: multiple-time co-host Deb Klowden Mann, and producers Amanda Roth, Chris Ford, Andy Davis, Adam Veil and Megan Bickle.
We hear what they all think about the co-host idea and also a little about them and what they're up to.
L.A.-based painter Davyd Whaley Foundation director Nick Brown talks about :
Quitting all his teaching jobs in favor of bartending while in New York because he needed to be making significantly for the high cost of living; how he got his current day job as director of the Davyd Whaley Foundation, which gives artist’s grants in the Southern California region, and what the job entails; how his being involved in the jury process has made him more sympathetic to artists who apply, advocating for prospective grantees; how he’s found artists in L.A. to be more generous in sharing opportunities than he experienced while in New York, and how he really likes to making art world introductions; his career successes and struggles, and how he sees the Whaley grant for emerging artists as a way for them to get a boost of recognition and advances their career; how he’s maintaining his UCLA extension teaching job in addition to being the Foundation director because he loves teaching so much, despite its challenges; how he sells his work, both to collectors he’s been able to cultivate without a gallery, as well as small watercolors on Instagram; the story of when a collector rang him up out of the blue and bought $10k of his work at a moment when he was really hurting financially; and how he applied to New American Paintings two years in a row with the exact same work, getting in the 2nd time (because it was all about the viewer, he said--not the work).
ᐧCanadian but now Berlin-based artist and software engineer Sarah Friend talks about:
Living in Berlin as an ex-pat among an ex-pat community so large that it tends to keep her and others from properly integrating into a big German city, and yet the Ven diagram of her kind of people - artists and people in tech - is in full force there; her day-job projects vs. her own art projects, which sometimes have a little overlap (she’s working on a Universal Basic Income-based cryptocurrency called Circles as a recent paid gig, for example); how she got started in software engineering (on her own, self-taught, early-20s), born out of her disillusionment with the class realities of the art world vis-à-vis her fellow graduating art students, as well as needing paid work coming into the great recession job market, and becoming an Occupy-er; her Remembering Network, an interactive digital memorial to all the species that are reaching extinction; and the existential questions, in light of that piece but other works she makes as well: when does something become art, and when does it not? And the way she sometimes she’s her art-making as having an extra limb: it would be a phantom limb if it were somehow taken away.
Painter and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo professor Laura Krifka talks about:
How her work is at its core about seduction, built through scenarios of being seduced, and how she constructs each painting to both seduce, and, by revealing subtle (metaphorical) cracks in the foundation, she also plays with repulsion; the frank reactions she’s received from more non-Art World audiences about being a ‘weird lady’ for the things she paints; her process of working with models, whom she really enjoys collaborating with and often become friends, and the ‘violence’ that she feels she brings to their painted visages… she feels more comfortable using herself as a model for the more distorted and/or vulnerable characters; how she meets the tremendous adulation she’s been receiving for her fall 2019 show in Los Angeles with the steadfast belief that it won’t last…she always leaves the house expecting some sort of disaster (and yet on the flip side, she’s very grateful for everything she has--including a tenure-track professorship); how she’s always planned on having a side hustle, and still plans to even if her work completely blows up (let’s hold her to that).
Detroit-based artist, curator, Afrofuturist and former mayoral candidate Ingrid LaFleur talks about:
Running for mayor of Detroit- why she did and what she learned in the process; her platform of Universal Basic Income, combatting economic violence, and using block chain for a local currency; how and why she started using block chain—mainly to use as an alternative currency that she would like to see implemented into Detroit’s economy; and the Detroit art community: how it’s segregated, ideally the kind of acknowledgement she would like from the white male artists who move to the city (which is 85% African-American)…plus, she offers a thoughtful prescription to anyone (white artists in particular) who may be moving to the city, of how to do so mindfully and respectfully.
ᐧArtists’ rights and laws expert and PhD Candidate Lauren van Haaften-Schick talks about:
Her first big experience with the secondary market via the runaway auction sale of a work by an artist showing at Nicole Klagsbrun – where Lauren was working at the time – and how it set her on a course re-considering artists’ contracts, resale royalties and activism for artists’ rights; how many of the resale royalties going to artists in the U.K., where they actually have a law supporting artists this way, have been on the small side, supporting the premise that resale royalties don’t only benefit big-name artists in big auctions; the Scull Auction of 1973, which marked the first time that contemporary American art was sold in such a brazenly speculative way, and led to a famous encounter between Robert Scull and Robert Rauschenberg; how activism works in artists’ rights in terms of potential redistribution, and ‘smart’ contracts; how big-name artists in the past (Robert Mangold, Jenny Holzer, Hans Haacke) showed up at congressional hearings for artist’s royalties, whereas recent generations of big-name artists have been relatively absent; and the ‘Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement, Seth Siegelaub’s 1971 contract which has had a long-lasting effect in this realm of the art world, despite the lack of awareness of its existence.
Ann Schnake, an East Bay artist and the co-founder of the Oakland project space Dream Farm Commons, talks about:
Her background as a nurse practitioner before she more formally became an artist, working in very intense environments (emergency rooms in communities with turmoil) and how those experiences affected her generally and left her yearning to become involved in the ‘poetics’ of art; why she continues to choose to live in the Bay Area after living there the majority of her life (she’s proud of its diversity, for one: Alameda County is 2nd only to Queens, NY for having the most diversity in its population), and how Oakland has such a vital history as well as present by way of the people who were pushed out of the area financially but come back to visit; starting to organize art in the county health centers via a program called Arts Change; how going back to school – for an MFA at California College of the Arts – at an older-than-usual age informed her experience, which was very positive as far as what she was able to get out of it, though she couldn’t avoid ageism from many of the younger students, and which she’s experienced in the art world at large, which she theorizes is connected to younger artists’ m.o.’s to stake out formidable peer groups for most effective impact; how she came to found her space Dream Farm Commons, largely because she “always preferred starting my own things…as opposed to applying to somebody else’s,” and the intentions and trials of running the space, which include finding ways to keep the doors open and adapting to walk-in computer thieves.
Berlin-based Greek artist Valentina Karga talks about:
Her artwork (and project from Max Haiven’s Art After Money…book) Valentina and Pieter Invest in Themselves—the collaboration as well as its ramifications in her greater life as an artist, in terms of their precarity and ‘generating parallel economies;’ her workshop in Glasgow, which eventually led to her project “the Institute of Spontaneous Generation” (2016); her background in architecture, and how it relates to/informs are art projects; a recent project her art students (she’s a professor at HFBK in Hamburg) completed, in which they were instructed to make artworks for the future, and how what they came up with was work that was ‘super negative, like a Black Mirror episode…’ post-apocalyptic, in other words; her project Temple of Holy Shit, which was conducted in a public park as part of a design biennial in Brussels, and entailed turning the human waste of visitors to the park – combined with compost, and the process of anaerobic fermentation – into usable soil…and how the problem with using this process on a wider scale actually has much more to do with the taboos around human waste than the actual science itself; her perspectives about working in collectives or collaborative projects in relation to working on one’s own, and how learning to know oneself is ultimately a necessity in most productively working with others.
In a follow-up conversation I had with artist Cassie Thornton (of epis. 248), I share with her my interest in moving some of art-making into the socially engaged realm, in particular related to real estate development issues that I’ve begun to investigate. Cassie provides advice and strategy suggestions in addition to sharing some of her own experiences related to building development in the San Francisco Bay Area, including a writer whom she sees as invaluable resource, and an artist, the German Sibylle Peters, as an ideal role model. She describes art institutions as ideal access points – highways, even - to people in finance or real estate, particularly board members; and ultimately describes this type of (socially engaged) work as the opportunity to both make a difference and at the same time to create an ambitious practical – even grandiose – joke.
Artist and co-director of London’s Furtherfield (London’s longest-running arts organization dedicated to de-centralized network culture) talks about:
Her experience being a sculptor in London just as the YBA (Young British Artist) scene began to emerge, and the troubling effects she saw it having on the city as a livable community for artists; the early internet art projects she made and curated; the first trans-humanist project (that she knows of), produced by a Finnish artist she worked with, in which he recorded everything happening in his life to the point that his consciousness could be uploaded to the net; the origins of her gallery Furtherfield, which is London’s longest-running arts organization dedicated to de-centralized network culture; and her work with blockchain and cryptocurrency- how they work in relation to art and artists, and how in her (web-based) community, blockchain is a way to re-think the world’s social order – including live-action role play - as opposed to just being leveraged as another capital-focused tool (Bitcoin etc.).
It's mid-August of 2019, and while The Conversation takes a week off, we are re-releasing this Blast from the Past, Lisa Schiff from episode #99, which was originally released on Jan. 3rd, 2015. She is the president and founder of SFA Advisory.
We selected this episode both because it's one many listeners may not be familiar with (since it's too old to show up in podcast platform queues), and because we feel it's a nice counterpoint to the recent programming we've been doing that's tended toward way outside the mainstream art market...whereas Ms. Schiff generally operates very much inside of it.
Here are the original notes included with that episode:
The Conversation, Episode 99: Lisa Schiff of Schiff Fine Art in New York talks about: what she does as an art advisor; the art market, vis-a-vis the Miami fairs, being bullish and the biosphere; why she’s an advisor and not a dealer; and the artists she’s visited and is passionate about.
Thunder Bay, Ontario and Bay Area artist Cassie Thornton talks about:
Her origins in northern Illinois, where she mainly grew up with a mom who struggled financially and was at the cutting edge of the downside of the financial crash, which planted an early seed for Cassie to eventually make artwork about debt; how she applied to CCA’s (California College of the Arts) Social P-Word program 3 months after the deadline, in a fever dream, and went on to have a seminal experience there, including attempting to start an artist-in-residence in the school’s finance department, and other feats of radical imagination; the genesis of her seminal artwork, “Give Me Cred!,” which started with her and a colleague deciding to not pay their credit card bills, and eventually led to her creating alternative credit reports for people based on their wherewithal to survive ‘a financial system that’s trying to eat them alive,’ and then become a way for them to get jobs and apartments; exactly why she advertises on her website, thefeministeconomicsdepartment.com, that “if you steal my idea, tell me how it goes;” why she moved to Thunder Bay, Ontario (primarily to co-run the ‘Reimagining Value Action Lab’ with Max Haiven at Thunder Bay University, but also for other reasons); why she finally gave up living in the Bay Area, after having lived in a succession of 6 places over a very short period; her Oakland pop-up real estate project ‘Desperate Holdings,’ which was part spa, part faux real estate agency and total social engagement project, in which she got to know many of the residents, including becoming friends with a woman who was nearly a daily presence there; and her video “I trusted you I trusted you I trusted you,” a marginalized yet epic piece which is representative of the out-of-the-box work that has led to a very bizarre fan base, including a feminist hedge fund that reached out to her to be their artist-in-residence.
In the final episode with Art After Money author Max Haiven, we talk about:
The history of and the current fate of artist collectives, as prompted by a listener’s thoughtful question; Le Freeport, the ultimate art storage facility, a crypt-like structure which Max visited in Singapore, and describes his experience of being there, and subsequently we discuss what a Freeport, a crypt for rich people’s art and antiques, means for the greater world of financialization; the structural violence (systemic violence) committed by the global capitalist elite, and their tendency to morally insulate themselves from their actions, up to and including building escape hatches and bunkers from New Zealand to Mars; Debtfair and Strike Debt, collectives that formed out of Occupy Museums, which itself was spawned through Occupy Wall Street; the art world politics that led to the creation of Art Prize, and how its populist response to the secretive and collusion-oriented market art world has been a problematic response; how Debt Fair, which was included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial, operates by calling out the institutions and sometimes even individuals whom participants are literally indebted to; what the future of debt in the U.S. and beyond looks like, vis-à-vis mainstream political support for eliminating debt; the Commons, as seen in collectives formed during the Occupy movement and also how they manifest in relation to art and the history of art; Max’s call for the abolition of art as borne out of the abolition of prisons, and in asking the question “what if were to abolish art?,” including museums, galleries and other institutions, what would creativity then look like?; and how everyone, not just billionaires, but even artists, create structures of avoidance to carry on with our work and not get into too dark of a place.
New York (and sometimes Europe)-based artist, internet activist and hacker Paolo Cirio talks about:
How he makes a living as an artist, mainly through commissions, workshops and guest appearances (and the occasional sale), and spread through several European cities as well as New York, and also how he keeps his expenses (including his rent in NY) low; his near future as an artist, as far as how sustainable his career is financially, should he choose to start a family; his activist roots growing up in Turin, Italy, which he describes as very working class and a lot of consciousness around politics, as well as early interest in computers and eventually the internet; his epic artwork, Loophole for All, in which he hacked into the General Registry of the Cayman Islands and published over 200,000 entities (many of them anonymous shell companies), then offered a certificate of ownership of those companies for $.99, and subsequently what it was like for him dealing with the fallout from that grand action, and how the piece tapped into complex logistics around how legislations are exploited by big global companies; why he chose the Cayman Islands for his project, as opposed to Delaware, which has a similar culture of offshore money laundering, according to Cirio; his contention that the art market is highly censored due to conflicts of interest on museum boards, including board members from tech giants like Google, in addition to his work not being ‘financially exploitable,’ thereby making it very difficult if not impossible for Cirio to exhibit his work in the U.S.; and why he isn’t going to be making an artwork that takes on Trump in conjunction wtih the upcoming election.
Samuel Harvey, Aspen-based artist and gallerist (Harvey Preston gallery) talks about:
How he initially settled in Aspen, through his various times working and teaching at the Anderson Ranch Art Center, as a ceramic artist; the many kinds of Aspen, including the 1%-ers and the regulars, and how he makes his way among them both, through his gallery, which he describes as a satisfying operation, but also very unpredictable in terms of what it provides to his income, in addition to the fact that he’s in a tenuous situation with the gallery’s commercial space lease; the “happy disaster” of his studio, which is a three-car garage just below his apartment, where the work that he makes as an artist brings him “endless joy,” something that we joke about because of our contrasting in-the-studio experiences; why his gallery is open seven days a week, which is an Aspen thing that has to do with the short on-seasons of sales activity; what he’s doing with his U.S Artist Assembly grant money; and the types of clients he has (people who really love the work, not speculative buyers).
Renny Pritikin, godfather of the Bay Area art community, veteran curator and author of the manifesto “Prescription for a Healthy Art Scene,” talks about:
Being a young poet who got into contemporary art via New Langton Arts, the pioneering San Francisco art non-profit that started back in the ‘70s; his close relationship with art critic, and poet, Peter Schjeldahl, who did a residency back in the early days of New Langston; his “Prescription for a Healthy Art Scene,” a document which he wrote back in the ‘90s, but his students starting putting out in the world a decade later, and then it got printed by galleries and he was finding it on the walls of artists he did studio visits with…; in ticking through the list of Prescriptions (there are 23 total), we discuss a few in particular, which lead to questions around: how realistic some of these points (such as there being plenty of teaching jobs at local art schools/universities) are now….whether graduate education has become something of a Ponzi scheme…why villains are important in an art scene, and more; some very practical things that he taught his curatorial students while at California College of the Arts, including assigning them to write wall texts directed at several different audience types, and how to collaborate as a group; his own experience as a curator, dealing with artists, embracing and coping with varying degrees of reception and critical feedback (including having his shows savaged by one local critic on more than one occasion), and the challenges and pleasures of working with varying artists; putting on the populist and the hit, first American museum show featuring Star Wars, which brought in 120,000 visitors; and the particular satisfaction of having viewers to your show read the wall text you wrote for your show.
In part 3 with Max Haiven, author of Art after Money, Money After Art, we talk about:
The influence (or lack thereof) of academia on the art market; the concept of writer Lauren Berlant’s ‘cruel optimism,’ which is something akin to a false sense of hope (Max uses the examples of using better light bulbs or taking shorter showers as being bogus solutions to climate change, which need to be addressed by the big corporations), and how it relates to art and artists, particularly young artists in anticipation of the type of career they envision; the importance of hype and confidence, not only in the art world but in the world at large (Max’s cites Uber’s fairly disastrous IPO); how confidence is performed, either tactically or non-tactically, which leads to a tangent previewing Max’s current book project about ‘Revenge,’ which features various far-right men’s groups (this conversation is in a bonus episode); artist/activist Paolo Cirio’s astounding 2014 piece, “Loophole for All,” in which he hacked the Cayman Islands’ Registry and published the names of over 200,000 firms, in turn selling forged certificates citing ownership of each of those companies for as low as $0.99; the distinction of an action or intervention being art, as opposed to just activism, and how that plays out in Cirio’s work in particular; Valentina Karga and Pieterjan Grandry’s “Valentina and Pieter Invest in Themselves,” a gold coin which is owned be a changing group of shareholders at different investment points, and how the piece sheds light on the exploitability of artists and their artworks in the market, and, how in their case, the ‘market’ is a proxy for community; Bay Area artist Cassie Thornton’s surprisingly effective “Give me Cred,” a project creating custom, alternative credit reports for housing and job applicants, an adaptation to a corrupt credit-scoring market; the artist in the book who inspired Max’s interest in financialization and in turn “Art After Money…” and how their relationship evolved; and finally, recommendations for learning more about Artivism.
In part 2 with Max Haiven, author of Art After Money, Money After Art, we dig into his book in earnest, including readings of and discussions about: his studies of social movements; how philosophers/theoreticians (mainly French) came to enter the discourse around contemporary art; Joseph Beuys’ work with bank notes (ie money); the radical imagination, which he derives from the philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis, but applies to the contemporary and in particular to financialization, but at its core is about taking a skeptical view of all the constructed institutions in our society that we are co-constructing all the time…including art; Hans Haacke, including his epis piece of institutional critique at the Museum of Modern Art (which led to the curator of the show he was in’s firing), and which leads Max to questions around what the ruling class wants from their art, and the contradictions therein; Lee Lozano, the pioneering conceptual artist and painter who did pieces including offering a jar of money to visitors to her studio, boycotting women, and eventually “Dropout Piece” which entailed her leaving the art world for the rest of her life, and martyred her, something Max suggests she would have railed against; the type of art world insider Max was able to speak with, and what his takeaways are from talking with them; Zach Gough’s participatory art experience/demonstration involving giving out an invented currency at levels respective to the hierarchies at conferences, and process of how those social hierarchies play out in real life (more or less); the incredible cognitive dissonance Max has experienced at art fairs, and his observation of multiple worlds co-existing simultaneously, and the act of their often ignoring each other (including him, since he was only a researcher); and finally, Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies’ 1967 intervention at the New York Stock Exchange, how contemporary iterations of that piece have been implemented, and how the spirit of the Yippies – both the best of it (community building, suffusing art into life), and the worst of it (contemporary art’s surface-y bombast and machinations) – very much exists in a lot of contemporary art, and why.
Natasha Degen, Chair of the Art Market Studies program at FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) in New York, talks about:
Juggling both art market research (including attending art fairs and market-related panels) and teaching/administrative work in her role as chair; the current transition of the market, more towards the most visibly branded and in some cases most powerful galleries, and the greater interest of the public, including globally, in contemporary art; how the brand of Art Basel (Miami) has gained such visibility that people go to Miami for the buzz and the product launches, etc., as much as for the fair itself, which they may not even attend; the goal of increasing diversity in the Art Market program, and the challenge of reconciling class issues that limit the ultimate barriers for entry into the professional art world(s); her prior career as a journalist, in which she got better access but also recognized the extent to which she was swept into the promotional machinery of the art world; the challenges of covering the art market, in getting through/beyond its opacity; the panel about art and money laundering that she participated in; the historically unprecedented rise of China in the art market, whose largest market categories are old masters and decorative art before contemporary art (for now); and the case of one young Chinese artist Natasha visited in New York, who turned down a show at a Lower East Side gallery but had sold out all the work in her studio to a Chinese collector through jpegs only.
Lakehead University professor and Art after Money, Money After Art author Max Haiven talks about: the ‘Dark Matter’ of the art world (coined by Gregory Sholette); the myth of meritocracy in the art world, as well as in his own academia, and the myth that money follows a logic that it always lands in the right places; how he uses art and the art world as a hieroglyph to understand a broader societal set of trends; how he, both as a critic and activist and a private citizen finds artworks with a political, often radical bent, most compelling (and which inform the curation of the work in the book); how some art as we know it is bleeding into forms of activism or agitation that has potential to resist oligarchical politics and economics that are destroying our world and most people’s lives; how art and money (especially finance) have always been connected; how the corrosive results of ‘finacialization’ includes the sense of competition individuals have towards their fellow citizens, leading to a sense of alienation and loathing the Max things we’re only beginning to understand; the way that critics legitimate works as ‘art,’ for better or worse, and his contention that art has the ability to get under the skin of the economy in ways that almost no other approach does; and how artists can make their most important contributions to social movements and social change not as artists, but as citizens.
In the 2nd part of the conversation with Glasstire editor Rainey Knudson, she talks about:
The farewell tour leading to her departure from Glasstire in June, which is taking the form of a series of talks, covering social media, its power and expanding reach and influence, as exemplified by someone like Jerry Saltz, and its evils, particularly Facebook, which she’s gotten off of and says her life is so much better because of it; how museums have become experiences of commerce as opposed to venues of self-reflection, including the Broad, the long-lined Yayoi Kusama touring hit, and others; artists who are running away from, or not engaging in, the proper art world – including local Houston heroes Jim Pirtle (of the iconic notsuoH bar), and Rick Low of Project Row Houses; how she doesn’t buy into the traditional metrics for success in the art world; and how she’s surprisingly optimistic about the future, despite all signs to the contrary.
Rainey Knudson, the editor of Houston-based online art magazine Glasstire, talks about:
The evolution of Glasstire, including when she started making it her full-time job; her piece (a real “cri de coeur,” which I read from in a past podcast outro, “My Fears and Their Assuagements,” particularly the 1st one about becoming a more critical viewer of art over time, and her ever more challenging hunt for great art; Glasstire’s breakdown of their art reviews over a three year period as far as ‘negative,’ ‘positive,’ and ‘neutral,’ and what Rainey’s assessment of those numbers are in relation to the feedback they get from readers after a review; we do all sorts of comparisons between Houston and Los Angeles’s art scenes (shit-talkers vs. backstabbers) including the freedom Rainey believes Houston artists have as compared with the art capitals, and their being supportive as a whole; how overrated Mark Rothko is; and why artists should still make art.
Los Angeles-based artist Anna Schachte talks about:
Her (and her family’s) decision to leave New York for L.A., including about to have a 2nd child, the love-hate-love relationship with NY and the wildly changed landscape, having lived in the Williamsburg/Greenpoint section of Brooklyn for nearly 17 years; the identity crisis she struggled with after having her first child, when she felt as though she were losing her identity as an artist, especially when combined with her separation from her gallery, which she had worked with right out of grad school; her various day jobs, including “puppet doctor,” scene painter, bartender and bookkeeper, and how she and her husband navigated their earning dynamic when they had kids; how the artist-run gallery that she was part of, Regina Rex, was born, and who was a part of it (mainly grad school colleagues/acquaintances from Chicago); how the gallery moved from Bushwick to the Lower East Side, and how this group of around 13 artists navigated decision making, curating, and business (who of the group was able to sell work, to make it sustainable) as a gallery, and experience she called “a beautiful utopian experience, until capitalism took over and chewed it up and burned it out.”
Jeff Weiss, artist, former professor of art, and creator of the OLD NEWS email list (aka Weisslink), talks about:
How and why he started OLD NEWS (initially for his students), the size of the list, the rules for how he puts the list together each day/night (7 days/week, 365/year), what kind of feedback he receives from readers/consumers of his list, and how he sees it as art; his takeaways from doing OLD NEWS, including how he chooses articles and why--as Duchamp said, art and money shouldn’t be confused; the long, arduous process of making a physical version of OLD NEWS for its 15th anniversary, a 5475-page book (one page per email over 15 years) that is moved around on a wagon; and he talks briefly about a mysterious project involving a vending machine that he’s looking for a home for.
Nick Ravich, director of production for Art21 in New York, talks about:
His approach as both a producer and a director of Art21 artist docs, which are produced in both shorter form as well as longer form on their most well-known platform, Art in the 21st Century, which is broadcast on PBS; the variation in artists’ approaches and responses to being subjects of Art21, and how inevitably they’re often made to be vulnerable, at the least by having a camera on them in their studio for an entire day (if not more); how Art21 survives as an institution, particularly with all of the other video-about-contemporary-art platforms that have sprung up since they launched; the affirmative dynamic Art21 has towards its artists, and how the process of choosing artists works (the artists almost always say yes); a bizarre experience he had with the photographer Kay Grannan when they were on a shoot and staying at a Las Vegas motel off the strip; and Nick launches into an insightful analysis of the differences between podcasts and video in terms of to what extent someone (artists in particular) will open up.
Simon Leung, Los Angeles-based artist and head of UC Irvine’s MFA program, talks about:
His 25-year relationship with Warren Niesłuchowski and Simon’s film, “War after War,” which is about Warren’s nomadic life; Warren’s background as a child of holocaust refugees, thru his experience of May ’68 in Paris, being part of the experimental theater world, becoming a war deserter, to the realities of his moving from place to place and city to city, relying on the kindness of friends and acquaintances who host him; Simon’s circuitous route to becoming a professor, without getting an MFA; what he himself advocates for undergrads who are thinking about grad school; how he compares his status as a UC professor to being a Roman senator, in the sense of his feeling of security amongst the crowd; and his performance piece “Actions!,” which performed at MoMA and then re-performed with a new script at the Hammer Museum (Actions! Adjuncts!), both forms of worker’s theater borne out of Simon’s identification with the museum workers’ strike, and whose scripts came out of his conversations with them.
In part 3 of 3 from the Donum Estate winery in Sonoma, Kristen Haring, technology writer, Keith Haring Foundation board member and youngest sister of the late Keith Haring, talks about:
Her work with the Foundation, which was started in 1989, and how Keith came to set it up out of his involvement in charities, including making logos for several organizations; her relationship with Keith (who was 12 years older), which was emphasized by his wanting to be a big influence on her, and later his wanting her to have her own life, separate from his career and Foundation; her experiences going in and out of the art world (as a non-art person), which she often finds bizarre, and describes as feeling like an anthropologist, and which started as early as when she was 11, when the family would go into the city from Pennsylvania for Keith’s openings; Keith’s concerns about economic disparity generally, and specifically in the form of collectors who would own his work to the exclusion of the public, and in turn, his efforts to make his work available to as many people who wanted it as possible, including through his Pop Shop, which, as opposed to criticisms of his being a sell-out, was in fact only profitable 2 of its 19 years; Keith’s interest in becoming famous, which Kristen found unappealing…in fact, her exposure to celebrity through Keith’s access made her move towards a desire to have a private life; and Keith’s 25-foot-tall steel sculpture, “King and Queen,” installed at Donum Winery.
Ianna Frisby and Gioia Fonda of Sacramento-based project Art Advice talk about:
How they came to start their collaborative project Art Advice, which is physically the real-life equivalent of the booth Lucy helmed in the cartoon Peanuts, only in this case they specialize in serving artists; the reason they both wound up in Sacramento, and the many pros that outweigh the cons of living in a non-art capital, including its scalable community and navigability; the pros and cons of going to grad school, and a Do-it-Yourself program put together by artists in Oakland that prospective students could consider before paying hefty grad school tuition; how local artists have forged their own paths without grad school; how to handle rejection, via a handout that Gioia wrote, which mainly entails getting back on the horse and applying to more opportunities, and how important it is to pursue relevant and targeted ones; and the gratifying aspects of running the Art Advice booth in its democratizing of the art community, and how it’s an instant gratification alternative to the slowness of institutional bureaucracy.
Debi Wisch and Jennifer Blei Stockman, two of the three main producers of the documentary The Price of Everything, about art and money, talk about:
The breakdown of the sales system in terms of democratization; auctioneer Simon de Pury’s line: “you should buy with your eyes, not your ears,” and ignore the background noise, as Debi puts it; buying trends among collectors, and the pros and cons of those purchases; the complications of gifting collections to museums; resources available to artists on the film’s website; the producers’ goals in terms of pulling back the curtain on the art world and getting people thinking and asking questions, and how one personal motivation was not being able to collect a lot of contemporary art they’d been interested in because it was too expensive; how artists (including Jeff Koons) don’t make any money from their work when it sells at auction; the draw of contemporary art around the world that’s been made apparent to the filmmakers through the many countries that have shown interest in the film; the possible reasons why a German refugee, just prior to the Holocaust, owns a Maurizio Cattelan sculpture of an adolescent-sized Adolph Hitler on his knees; and the challenges and thrills of navigating the learning curve of filmmaking over a seven-year span for this ambitious documentary.
On the 7th anniversary of The Conversation, NYC-based art consultant and secondary market seller Daniel Oglander talks about:
His daily routine as an art advisor who works from home; a multi-person, four-month-long deal (involving a Warhol) that went wrong at the last minute, and how; how trust plays such an important factor in the highly unregulated marketplace that he works in, and functions to actually keep it together; the relationships he has with his younger collectors, for whom his objective is to get them to develop their own voice; the pros and cons of working on deals with high-priced art vs. low-priced art; why he’s tired of being asked about George Condo paintings; and speaking of Condo, he shares a harrowing story involving the delivery of a Condo painting to an impatient collector.
Madrid-based English sculptor Richard Hudson, onsite at Donum Estate winery, talks about:
The history of both the concept and production of his large-scale sculpture “Love Me,” completed and installed at Donum in 2016, which sits at the highest point of the winery, is 8 meters (26 feet) high, 8 meters wide and weighs 16 tons; his transition from property developer to world traveler- he went on a walkabout that lasted 4 ½ years – to deciding to become an artist at 42, and his quick career success; his sons, who are both artists; and his romantic philosophies about life and art-making.
New York-based artist and outdoor advertising interventionist Jordan Seiler talks about:
Being both an artist and an activist, titles which can be interchangeable, and his initial impulse to address public space taken over by advertising as a citizen of New York City; his origins as a billboard and ad poster interventionist, starting from when a teacher provoked him by saying that he wasn’t capable of doing it; how he realized one of his main objectives was to attempt to change people’s attitude toward advertising in public space, to ask questions including “why?” and “at what cost?,” and how part of that process involved taking over large-scale ad campaign platforms, particularly via illegally posted ads; and how to do your own billboard/outdoor advertising interventions without getting caught, and, if you do get questioned by the police, what to say to them.
Introducing Conversation Art Podcast listeners to Michael Shaw's new podcast, How I Get By.
Episode 1 features Julie R.
She works as a substitute teacher and a babysitter in Boulder, Colorado. She’s charming and funny, and doesn’t mince words when talking about how she gets by. The way she talks about her future challenges feel universal.
London-based sculptor Douglas White talks about: the harvesting of blown-out tires on the side of the road in Belize, which were collected and turned into his rubber palm tree sculpture, “Black Palm;” how the logistics of collecting and shipping flora and objects, and interacting with people along the way, is an intrinsic part of his work; how encountering a dead bat in Australia eventually led to a piece using dried banana peels; and what it’s been like getting to revisit Black Palm at Donum Estate two years after initial installation.
Brigitte Mulholland, associate director at Anton Kern gallery, talks about:
Her early turning points that led her away from traditional art history (and early marriage) and into contemporary art and working at galleries; what she loves about working in galleries in general and Anton Kern in particular, including getting to work with and be at the service of artists, especially Chris Martin, whom she adores; how she’s know at the gallery for handling the toughest calls from clients, including being the one who gets yelled at; the troubled realities of the way some collectors behave, from flirting all the way to virtually demanding sexual favors for them to make a purchase, and how Brigitte decided not to wear a wedding ring because, as her married colleagues told her, ‘it would only encourage them;’ how #MeToo has thus far only affected curators and publishers in the art world, and her skepticism that it will take down collectors anytime soon; how she’s somehow both extraordinarily sensitive AND has a thick skin at the same time, and she thinks you need a thick skin to work in the gallery world; and how for her, it’s ultimately about the art and the artists first and foremost…the sales tend to fall into place.
Performance artist, art critic and newly minted UNLV art department chair Marcus Civin talks about:
Why he decided to take the job, moving from a satisfying academic career in Baltimore at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA); how his involvement in the Providence, R.I.-based art collective New Urban Arts launched his career trajectory as an undergrad, providing connections and mindset; the harsh realities of being an adjunct teacher (whom he hires as dept. chair), and how as a prospective adjunct you need to know what you’re in for, and it’s not for everyone; the harsh realities against becoming a salaried faculty member, he (slim) odds for adjuncts getting those slots, and his own theories about the pros and cons of certain types of faculty candidates he’s considering hiring; his performance art, including his ideal venue and his ideal size audience and the roots of his work in the court jester and the absurd; how the students he’s encountering at UNLV are warriors leading a revolution, and are ready for change, and compared being in college in 2018 to being in college in 1968 in terms of the potency of the moment; and his misstep in sharing a seminal Chris Burden performance with a performance class at MICA, and what a wake-up call it was for him.
In the 2nd half of our long conversation, NYC-based artist Joshua Citarella talks about:
The end of his run making a living from his work – by selling it through galleries and through his and Brad Troemmel’s UV Production House – and his urgency to get a full-time job lined up as soon as possible, only to find that, as a photo re-toucher, the only jobs available were freelance or “permalance;” our current gilded age of income inequality, which led him to quote Mike Peppe, who coined the term “cloud feudalism”; the precarity of being a freelancer, and how it’s affected his thoughts about artists and their choices, as well as his assertion that the cost and barrier for entry into the art world is so high that it’s almost exclusively restricted to the leisure class, and how the tensions around that divide is particularly apparent on the ground in New York; pieces from his and Brad Troemmel’s UV Production House, which they ran out of Ebay for a while until they were kicked off for the 7th time (for breaching the terms of service); and more about the inequities of the market, especially for those trying to figure out how to make a living, via their artwork and/or otherwise.
In the part 1 of 2 episodes, NYC artist Joshua Citarella talks about:
Why he grew disillusioned with the art world vis-à-vis the art market, including his having early success but also being part of the ‘pump-and-dump’ market rise and fall between 2012 and 2015; his collaborations with artist Brad Troemmel - who was profiled in a New Yorker article by Adrien Chen, and in which Citarella was also featured – particularly their online marketplace project UV Production House; his thoughts on social media, particularly his wisdom about Instagram, and how artists should aim to be tastemakers rather than following trends that the algorithms like; his hope in using social media (via Meme culture and more) to take down established structures of the art world, and the subsequent hard dose of reality that followed; untangling the concept, or the presumption even, that an artist is a progressive; and navigating the roles of artist and activist, and where an artist can be most productive.
New York-based artist/sculptor Hein Koh talks about:
Her multiple living spots throughout New York, from Astoria to Bedford Stuyvesant (where she heard gunshots on her block more than once) to the Upper East Side and back to Brooklyn, initially guided by the need to have a basement for band practice, and later by proximity to her husband’s work and their friends in Brooklyn; her 2015 Instagram post (also shared on FB) -- of her double breast-feeding her newborn twins while simultaneously working on her laptop, couple with a very thoughtful and provocative caption about her experience as a mom and artist who’s transformed for the better – which went viral, and what her experience as a viral celebrity was like, both pros and cons; the change in her artwork after having kids, which went from much darker to more colorful, including starting to use metallic spandex in her sculptures right after her kids were born.
Social media influencer and consultant Robin Cembalest (with 45K IG followers) talks about:
How she went from art magazine writing and editing to working more and more prominently in social media, first with Tumblr and then Twitter and Instagram; her strategies for using Twitter, including using Twitter ‘lists,’ as well as the same for Instagram, including: whom you might follow, the three-second rule for whom to follow, how WHO you follow and follows you is ultimately more important than your Like and Follower numbers, and the importance of your message - what are you trying to tell people - above all else, even ‘felicitous’ images; how Instagram is a form of ‘micro-networking’ that can be used for connecting to people in real life; and how people are talking with each other these days through images, and how in her consulting business she teaches clients how to communicate the points you want people to know about you.
Lucas Spivey of the roving projects Mobile Incubator and Culture Hustlers talks about:
His origin story of getting into art education, including wanting to fix an inadequate system; how over a year and a half he drove over 20,000 miles and met with over 2000 artists in 42 states, hearing people’s stories and eventually conducting podcasts and call-in shows; the Santa Fe-based art collective Meow Wolf; the importance of cultivating 1000 true fans (as written by Kevin Kelly), and how he sees the listeners of his podcast as side hustlers, not the artist who’s already made it; his advice about what an artist should do in certain situations, including whether to make work that’s experimental vs. marketable, and what their plan should be if they’re working multiple part-time jobs but really just want to paint.
Brooklyn, and occasionally London-based art writer Margaret Carrigan talks about:
The challenges of being a freelance art journalist, including connecting with new editors and making sure not to be juggling too many, or too few, articles at a time; her provocative article, Jerry Saltz has a Pulitzer and I have Questions, for the New York Observer, and all of the many pros and cons related to Saltz’s writing, and the state of art criticism generally, including how much there may be a trend towards anti-intellectualism; to cover, or not to cover art fairs as an art writer; and her big takeaways from working at Modern Painters magazine, her last full-time job, including the deviousness of capitalism in the form of Blouin Media.
Berlin-based artist Lee Wagstaff talks about: Leaving London several years in advance of the 2012 Olympics, when he saw the writing on the wall in terms of development and subsequently, rent; how his career took off initially via his thesis show at the Royal College of Art, which featured his prominent body art, composed of geometric patterns he designed himself (and we subsequently talk extensively about his history with tattoos- one symbol in particular); his French ‘agent,’ whom he still calls a good friend, who facilitated the first few years of his career by doing everything from buying Lee’s work to buying his materials to setting up shows; how David Bowie, who collected Lee’s work, has supported him mentally, even though they never met; how he turned the gallery that he ran while also his studio, back into his studio that can become a gallery when he wants (and needs) to show and sell his work; and we talk frankly about his struggles as an artist to take advantage of the opportunities he’s had, mostly because he doesn’t fulfill the mold of the artist who’s good at networking and schmoozing.
Ridgewood, Queens, New York-based artist and former gallery director Courtney Childress talks about:
The gentrification factor in Ridegewood, a burgeoning neighborhood of artists in Queens, and why she chose to live, and work, there; leaving her gallery day job roles to both freelance and become a champion for her own art and other artists in her circle; how she wound up turning working in a gallery into an advantage as an artist, after some of the artists she was working with/for recognized her sensitivities; some of the business-oriented things she’s learned about putting your work out there, having trained under a gallerist with an M.B.A.; why it doesn’t make sense to go to big-time gallery openings as a younger/emerging artist looking to build community; her side business, Mother of 1000s, which involves customized succulents (she currently has 87 plants in her apartment, and more on the 2nd floor of her building’s hallway); and when it is and isn’t beneficial for certain people to go to art fairs.
Hilde Helphenstein of Los Angeles gallery HILDE talks about: combating the male dominated art world and art history, her path from being a 26-year-old-intern to opening her own gallery, having an intellectual life outside of Donald Trump, the mission of her gallery, being the three-legged chihuahua in the dog fight, why she supports dropping out of grad school, resilience, what she learned working for Gagosian, and the importance of informal education.