Art and psychoanalysis have had a very long and intense relationship over the years, and it makes sense that these two fields would be drawn to one another. Critics have long looked at psychoanalysis as offering a sophisticated model of decoding images and fantasies. Artists have made productive use of ideas like the unconscious and the uncanny, an…

Summer is in full swing, which means that crowds from the world over are heading on vacation and many of them are descending in huge numbers into one of the most famous cities in the world—Venice, Italy. Earlier this spring, the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale opened, curated by the highly esteemed Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa. His exhibit…

Although the art business world may be on holiday right now, we're still pounding the (international) pavement to bring you a report of the most important and talked-about events in the art world right now. This week, hosts Kate Brown and Ben Davis are joined by Artnet's London correspondent Vivienne Chow for the monthly roundup. Just two short wee…

 If you've seen the artworks of Marianna Simnett, you know that it is not easy to forget them. The multidisciplinary artist who works between film, installation, drawing, painting, sculpture, and even theater, is a world-builder of surreal and sometimes horrific proportions. Her works lodge themselves deep into your psyche with an unsettling amount…

There's no denying that we live in an era of crisis, from geopolitical strife to economic squeezes and widening wealth disparity. Looming behind all of that is the ecological devastation brought on by climate change. All of these challenges have had an impact on the art market and the wider cultural sector writ large. Artists, galleries, museums, a…

With his themes of repetition and appropriation, Andy Warhol’s work can seem mass produced. He was prone to say that his assistants did his work for him and often invented different narratives in interviews. In fact, weaving tall tales and shaping his own mythology was another important aspect of his art: he was creating the ultimate persona of an …

It is the exhausted end of a jam-packed month of May, and we're staring into what promises to be a similarly jam-packed June. It's overwhelming to think about it all, but exciting to discuss some of the biggest stories of the last few weeks. That's right, it's time again for our monthly roundup, this month hosted by Artnet's national art critic Ben…

Land art, the movement which emerged in the 1960s and 70s with artists such as Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, and Michael Heizer erecting monumental works in far-flung destinations, is widely regarded for its engagement with the environment and its elements. These remarkable installations are crafted in concert with the Earth, meant to evolve as sun,…

Who are the rising talents in the art world poised for greatness? Discover them in ‘Up Next’, Artnet’s popular series of profiles introducing you to key visionaries on the verge of stardom. This month, we’re airing two special Art Angle episodes spotlighting two figures shaping their fields in innovative ways. Subscribe to The Art Angle wherever yo…

What is a connoisseur? Who can be one? What role do they play in shaping tastes of the art market and the large expanse of art history? There's perhaps no better place to ask these kind of questions than at TEFAF, the many splendored Dutch fair where art, antiquities, and antiques take center stage. Each spring, the event returns to New York City a…

Who are the rising talents in the art world poised for greatness? Discover them in ‘Up Next’, Artnet’s popular series of profiles introducing you to key visionaries on the verge of stardom. This month, we’re airing two special Art Angle episodes spotlighting two figures shaping their fields in innovative ways. Subscribe to The Art Angle wherever yo…

There is a lot to unpack—literally and figuratively—in the Metropolitan Museum’s new Costume Institute show, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” which opens on Friday May 10. It’s about nature and the cycle of life (and as it turns out, there is a lot about death). It also touches on chemistry, biology, mythology, and so much more, all told th…

We're sharing a special preview of Previously Unknown, a podcast from our friends at Independent New York. Previously Unknown reframes and reevaluates what we think we know about contemporary art. In this segment from the latest episode, Artnet News Pro Editor Andrew Russeth moderates a discussion with Independent art fair founder Elizabeth Dee, cu…

As anyone who has been listening to this show recently will already know, the world's largest and most closely scrutinized art event—the Venice Biennale— is now open in Italy. Every two years, different countries compete for the attention of art lovers and judges with individual national pavilions. For the 2024 Biennale, among the most talked about…

It is time for another edition of the Art Angle Roundup, where we look at some of the biggest headlining stories of the past month. But really, let's be honest, in the art world there's just one headlining story, and that is the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale, the so-called "Olympics of the Art World," which opened to the public last Saturday,…

The art press is filled with headlines about trophy works trading for huge sums: $195 million for an Andy Warhol, $110 million for a Jean-Michel Basquiat, $91 million for a Jeff Koons. In the popular imagination, pricy art just keeps climbing in value—up, up, and up. The truth is more complicated, as those in the industry know. Tastes change, and d…

Next week, the art world will descend into the Venetian Lagoon for the Venice Biennale, the most highly anticipated art event of this year. The Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa is at the helm of the prestigious group exhibition, which is now in its 60th edition, and his show includes more than 300 artists and collectives presented in the historic …

Every two years, the Whitney Museum of American Art returns with its signature and much-anticipated biennial. Founded in 1931, the Whitney Biennial is one of the most historically important art events in the United States, a survey that brings together artists from throughout the country, and more recently, from around the world. Often controversia…

Well, it is the end of March, spring has sprung, and April showers are coming in fast and furious. We're back with the monthly Art Angle Round Up, where we focus our attention on three headline-making stories that have made the rounds in the last month. This week, Art Angle hosts Ben Davis and Kate Brown are joined by Artnet brand editor William va…

A few years back, electrifying bidding wars and monumental transactions routinely had us all on the edge of our seats in the auction room, but this sort of in-room excitement now feels a long way off. Although you wouldn't necessarily know it from the triumphant post-sale press releases that are just as routinely put out by the auction houses who a…

The contemporary art world is nothing if not confusing. It is simultaneously deeply frivolous, and takes itself way too seriously. Its business dealings combine total mystification with conspicuous consumption, and the exact mechanisms by which one type of art gets celebrated above another are very often impossible to figure out. If you've ever str…

It has been 17 years since James Fuentes first hung a shingle out under his own name. In the years since, he has carved out a unique position in the contemporary art world, representing an eclectic mix of older, sometimes overlooked artists, alongside younger, buzzier names. Prior to striking out on his own, Fuentes worked for a handful of high-pro…

On this week's episode, hosts Ben Davis and Kate Brown are joined by the newly-minted Artnet Pro editor and veteran art journalist and critic Andrew Russeth. We're thrilled to have him as a part of our team, and he's making his Art Angle debut with another edition of the Round Up, where we discuss three topics making headlines and sparking conversa…

The words the “Harlem Renaissance” have immense magnetism for vast numbers of people. In art history, however, the Harlem Renaissance has often been treated as a footnote to the main story of 20th century art. It’s often been given scant attention in textbooks, and even U.S. museums have historically given more attention to European movements of th…

Last month, much of the art industry was transfixed on the goings-on in a courtroom in downtown Manhattan, where the Russian businessman Dimitry Rybolovlev and a group of Sotheby’s auction house representatives were taking turns on the witness stand. The matter at issue was artworks that Rybolovlev had purchased via the Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvie…

The term “abstraction” gets thrown around a lot in the art world, usually as a vague catchall to describe an otherwise inexpressible style of painting or sculpture. Just going by the dictionary’s definition, “abstract” is described as being disassociated from any specific instance, or having only intrinsic form with little or no attempt at pictoria…

Artificial intelligence was one of the hottest topics in art in 2023—and we can predict that it will continue to be a major topic in 2024. We can debate whether we should be cautiously optimistic or in an existential panic, but most of us can agree that the impact will be enormous. Way back in May 2022, Art Angle co-pilot, art critic Ben Davis, tal…

We are well into 2024 now, coming to the end of January, and looking back at 2023, one of our favorite innovations was this monthly round up here at the Art Angle. Each month, we bring together Artnet News editors and writers to discuss the biggest art news developments of the last month, and take the pulse of what's happening around the world. Thi…

The author Ishmael Reed is known as a major force in literature and has been called one of the key thinkers of multiculturalism. Born in 1938, Reed arrived with a bang in 1972 with Mumbo Jumbo, a vibrant, hard-to-describe novel that blends real historical events with outrageous fantasy, about a plague of dancing that breaks out, spread by Black art…

If you like art and are on Instagram, then you probably know the account @freeze_magazine—that's freeze spelled with an E, like "help me, I'm freezing," not with an I, like the popular art magazine and art fair. It's certainly not the first art meme account, but with now more than 160,000 followers, freeze_magazine has gained a particularly large a…

Any short list of the most important art critics of the last decades would have to include Lucy R. Lippard. She would also be at the very top of Artnet's art critic Ben Davis's personal list of favorite writers about art. Lippard has written numerous important books, including Six Years: the Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1973, the book t…

If you follow the mainstream art world, you will know that for the last decade, one of the biggest stories has been a boom in new kinds of figurative painting. A visit to the recent spate of art fairs in New York revealed that this boom is far from slowing down, but nothing stays unchanged forever, and trend-watchers have been scanning the landscap…

At the end of the year, it's become something of a tradition for people in all corners of the Internet to review the last 12 months and take a look to the future with a sort of "micro-forecast." The original idea of an "Ins and Outs" list began at the Washington Post in the 1970s, and is now a global sensation. Here at Artnet, we decided to try our…

"Art is something that makes you breathe with a different kind of happiness." That's a quote from the great Bauhaus textile artist Anni Albers that gets shared a lot, and is especially relevant for this week's episode of the podcast on the subject of art and joy. It's actually a little bit unclear what Albers means when she says that "art is a diff…

Most loyal Art Angle followers will be familiar with the curator Klaus Biesenbach. The German-born artist made his mark in Berlin in the 1990s, founding the city's biennale and one of its most-beloved art institutions, Kunst-Werke. He moved West, across the water, becoming director of MoMA PS1, and chief curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New Y…

Well, we made it to the end of the year (almost!), and we are back at the Art Angle with our monthly Round Up, where we bring together some of our esteemed reporters to talk about the big stories that are swirling in the air. Joining host Ben Davis this week to chat are senior editor Kate Brown and senior market reporter Eileen Kinsella. As always,…

"I was like reborn," the art critic Clement Greenberg once remembered, "it was the most important event in my life." The event in question was his encounter with Sullivanian therapy. His biographer, Florence Rubenfeld, once wrote that it would not overstretch the facts to say that after the late '50s, Clem's comportment in the art world can only be…

One of the biggest art events of the year is currently up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. That, dare we say, once-in-a-lifetime exhibition is “Manet/Degas.” Through more than 160 works of art, including landmark loans from dozens of institutions, it puts into dialogue two of the most famous French painters of the 19th century, Édouar…

Marcel Dzama has an immediately recognizable style as a visual artist, but his energy has far exceeded the realm of visual art. Born in Winnipeg, Canada in 1974, Dzama got his start with the Royal Art Lodge, a group of students at the University of Manitoba who banded together in the mid-1990s. Their collaborative working method, where one artist w…

In 2018, Helen Molesworth was unceremoniously dismissed from her position as chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles. The move proved controversial among industry insiders, many of whom cast it as an example of an institution punishing its employee, a straight talking, strong willed feminist, for refusing to march in line. But f…

In today's global discourse, “Asia” often takes on an expansive, sometimes oversimplified, identity. Especially within the global art market, this vast continent is frequently painted with broad strokes, overshadowing its rich tapestry of cultures, intricacies, and nuances. Over the past two decades, major global auction houses have been touting “t…

This week, the Art Angle is returning with this month's edition of the Round Up, featuring Artnet News Europe Editor Kate Brown, National Art Critic Ben Davis, and Global News Editor Naomi Rea. After a whirlwind two weeks of back-to-back art fairs at Frieze London and Paris+, the writers discuss if Art Basel's newest fair can usurp the flagship eve…

In December 2020, Congress approved funding for a new Smithsonian Museum dedicated to women's history to be built on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. But our nation's capital has actually been home to a dedicated women's museum, the vaunted National Museum of Women in the Arts, since 1987. The institution, founded by Wilhelmina Cole Holliday a…

For more than 30 years, the acclaimed British sculptor Conrad Shawcross has been preoccupied with the concept of time. Throughout a career defined by blurring the boundaries between art and science and devising ambitious constructs that ask audiences to contemplate the world around them, Shawcross has experimented with different perceptions of time…

How can art institutions adapt to meet the changing cultural landscape in the coming decades, and what are the new models that will evolve to fill these needs? Fotografiska, a private, for-profit photography museum, is offering a novel possibility. Fotografiska's self proclaimed mission is to offer a unique cultural destination where people can dis…

Hal Foster is one of the most well-known thinkers about art today. In a career that spans several decades, he is known for important much-cited books including The Return of the Real from 1996, Design and Crime from 2002 and most recently, Brutal Aesthetics from 2020. He teaches at Princeton and writes for a broader audience at Artforum and the Lon…

The fall art season is now officially in full swing. We've had a big round of fairs already around the world with the Armory Show, Independent 20th Century, Photofairs and more opening simultaneously in New York, and the second edition of Frieze Seoul and Kiaf Seoul taking place in Asia, plus all of the galleries and museums that have begun to roll…

Harry Everett Smith is an odd figure to come across in an art museum. That's because he's not known primarily as a visual artist at all. For most, Harry Smith is probably best known as the compiler of the legendary Anthology of American Folk Music, a landmark collection of early recordings published in 1952, which became a huge influence on the fol…

What does the future of the art market look like? It's a big and thorny question that cannot possibly be answered with a few simple words. From the big picture issues like how artificial intelligence will factor into business decisions and the global economic situation, to the smaller and more particular aspects, like which multi-million dollar col…

There are endless ways to write about art, but if you tell someone that's your job, the first thing they're likely going to think is that you write art reviews, though the fact of the matter is that very few people actually do. In other words, the art critic is a key character in the mythology of the art world, as a champion who spots talent and in…