Epis. 366: Cancel Culture, an art/fireworks performance gone wrong, the art market, and strategic gallery going- Emily Colucci of Filthy Dreams co-hosts the OLD NEWS

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)

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.

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Epis. 365: Brooklyn artist Liz Ainslie: a coveted artist loft, scream-core singing, and artists who stay with their community even after success

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 screamcore 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.

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

                   

                 

                                                               

Epis. 364: Turner Prize-winner Jesse Darling may or may not keep making art; new OLD NEWS with co-host Dr. Maiza Hixson

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.

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

Darling as he’s announced the winner of the Turner Prize:

                   

                 

                                                               

Epis. 363- Friendship and Fraud in the Art World, with author and former art dealer Orlando Whitfield

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

                   

                 

                                                               

Epis. 362- Art protests, artist ruptures and Miranda July: the latest OLD NEWS w/special guest Maiza Hixson

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 BONUS OLD NEWS content, please become a Patreon supporter of the podcast here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod

                   

                 

                                                               

Epis. 361- NY artist Adam Henry on what makes a successful show, and navigating the fluctuations of the art market

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.

To listen to the complete episode with Adam Henry, please become a Patreon supporter of the podcast here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod

                   

                 

                                                               

Epis. 360- How to Navigate Downward Mobility as an Art Worker- Valerie Werder, Part 2

To listen to Episode 360A, the Bonus episode in which Valerie talks about her life in shoplifting, please visit: Patreon.com/theconversationpod    The Conversation Art Podcast | creating a podcast that goes behind the scenes of the art worlds | Patreon

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.

                                

                 

                                                               

Epis. 359- Journalist Bianca Bosker: a ‘normie Philistine’ dives into the art world, working for artists, dealers and as a museum security guard with the aim of demystifying

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

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).

                                

                 

                                                               

Epis. 358- Valerie Werder turns her intense years working for a blue-chip gallery into an inspired novel, Thieves

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.

                                

                 

                                                               

Epis. 357- Seattle artist Debra Broz on her studio routines, her love of work, and successfully navigating “the feel bad machine” that is Instagram

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.

BONUS Patreon footage of this episode includes: the history with Broz’s last name, pronounced “Bros” like “Rose,” which of course eventually arrives at “Bros before ‘Hos.” Her restoration business, the other side of her studio work, where she works with clients restoring their precious objects and keepsakes of all kinds, including one client who has his Picasso-edition ceramics restored; the breakdown of her income from artwork sales to restoration sales, which depends on the year but is often about the same;  her attitude about work, which she loves to do, but not the hustling part when she’s looking for shows and clients, her compulsion towards making whether sculptures or restoration…

If you would like to access Bonus Episodes of the show, to get more content AND support our podcast, please consider becoming a Patreon donor for as little as $1/month via the link below:

The Conversation Art Podcast | creating a podcast that goes behind the scenes of the art worlds | Patreon

                                

                 

                                                               

Epis. 356- Zombie Formalism, Debt aesthetics, and AI & Art: New Yorker writer/critic Chris Wiley

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.

If you would like to access Bonus Episodes of the show, to get more content AND support our podcast, please consider becoming a Patreon donor for as little as $1/month via the link below:

The Conversation Art Podcast | creating a podcast that goes behind the scenes of the art worlds | Patreon

Chris Wiley’s articles discussed in The Conversation:

What Was the NFT?,
 The Toxic Legacy of Zombie Formalism, Part 1,
The Toxic Legacy of Zombie Formalism, Part 2,
A Photographer Embraces the Alien Logic of A.I.

                                

                 

                                                               

Epis: 354- the Art Thief, the remarkable story of art history’s most prolific stealer – Stéphane Breitwieser – with author Michael Finkel

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.

If you would like to access Bonus Episodes of the show, to get more content AND support our podcast, please consider supporting The Conversation on Patreon via the link below:

The Conversation Art Podcast | creating a podcast that goes behind the scenes of the art worlds | Patreon

                                

                 

                                                               

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