The Art Angle

How many times have you heard someone in a museum scoff "I could do that" in the presence of a solid-black canvas or an obtuse conceptual installation? You're not alone, and frankly, curator-turned-YouTube-star Sarah Urist Green understands the disconnect between art enthusiasts and art skeptics. But she wants to fix it by guiding all of us, from truck drivers to art historians, into tapping our own inner wells of creativity using the biggest video platform on the planet. After grad school and a curatorship at the former Indianapolis Museum of Art (renamed Newfields in 2017), Urist Green was well-versed in the ins and outs of the contemporary-art scene. But she eventually began to tire of the insular world built up around the work itself and longed for a way to expand art's audience. When her husband, the novelist John Green, mentioned off-hand that PBS was developing new educational programming, she took the plunge and pitched a show called "The Art Assignment" centered on projects designed by avant-garde artists that everyone, everywhere could complete themselves. Now a weekly digital web series, the YouTube fixture has some 500,000 subscribers, and it has branched out from its core concept to include travel episodes, art-history-themed cooking lessons, and much more. After six years helming the wildly popular series, Green published her first book, You Are an Artist: Assignments to Spark Creation, in late March, just as millions of people around the world were being forced to retreat indoors for weeks on end. The timing was uncanny. Born out of her YouTube series, the book is brimming with projects dreamed up by such critically acclaimed talents as Alec Soth, Michelle Grabner, and the Guerrilla Girls—each one engineered to be feasible from home with the materials available. It's a perfect solution for our long days of sheltering in place.  On this week's episode, Urist Green joins Andrew Goldstein by phone to discuss her unexpected art-world journey, the serendipitous appeal of her new book, and how you—yes, you—can be an artist, too.

Just when you thought the spring of 2020 couldn't get any weirder, a Microsoft ad starring performance artist Marina Abramović caught the attention of conspiracy peddler Alex Jones and his followers, sparking accusations that the artist was practicing satanism and reigniting the "pizzagate" controversy that ensnared Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman John Podesta four years ago. It all began with a seemingly innocuous commercial put out by Microsoft to advertise a product called HoloLens 2, a newfangled set of mixed-reality smart glasses, which Abramović used to create her augmented-reality artwork The Life. Hours after the ad debuted online, an onslaught of exceedingly negative comments drove the tech company to scrub it from the Internet completely. Abramović, a native Serbian artist who has come to define a certain brand of physically and psychologically exhaustive performance, helped chart a new path for contemporary art over the course of her 50-year career. In the process, she's become a fashion icon and a friend and muse of such celebrities as James Franco and Lady Gaga. But, as it turns out, a certain corner of the Internet has also seized on her early work engaged with Eastern European politics and religious traditions—which involved dousing herself in gasoline inside a flaming pentagram and spending hours scrubbing blood off animal bones—as a sign that she, well, worships Satan and is the high priestess of a cabal formed by the Hollywood and political elite. Confused? So were we. On this week's episode of the Art Angle, Artnet News's chief art critic Ben Davis joins host Andrew Goldstein by phone to break down the controversy—and explain why this moment of turmoil is proving to be an exceptionally fertile one for conspiracy theorists to reach an audience.

Peter Schjeldahl, an acclaimed critic with incomparable writing about art, discusses his journey from aspiring poet to renowned art critic. He explores the cultural and historical context of the art world during the Kennedy years, delves into Andy Warhol's transformative journey, and emphasizes the importance of authenticity and personal experience in art criticism. The speaker reflects on the role of the audience and the impact of death on their perspective, leading to a call to action for listeners.

Ai Weiwei is not shy about tackling the big issues. Despite winning international acclaim for his interdisciplinary, boundary-pushing art, the Chinese-born artist is better known in some circles for his activism—though in his estimation, the two are inextricably linked. As the coronavirus pandemic continues to wreak varying degrees of havoc around the globe, Ai has increasingly turned his attention toward how the illness is exposing the failures of governments and aggravating the geopolitical fault lines between world powers. Although China, where the outbreak began in December 2019, seems to have contained the virus sufficiently to begin easing its way back to some kind of normalcy, serious questions remain about how transparent Xi Jinping's regime has been about the disease. After being detained, beaten, and surveilled by party officials in 2011 in response to his investigative work, Ai knows better than most how the tentacles of China's authoritarian government can accost citizens willing to criticize the state. He believes that here, too, the bureaucracy's unwillingness to admit its own errors has created disastrous consequences for others—this time, the world over. But he also believes that leading Western nations, especially the United States, bear some of the blame for being too accommodating of China for too long, all in pursuit of profit. This week on the podcast, Ai Weiwei calls in from Cambridge, UK, where he is safely ensconced with his son and girlfriend, to discuss the pandemic, its effects on global politics, and how artists can contribute to a world in turmoil.

Today, Antwaun Sargent is known as the preeminent critical and curatorial voice for one of the most important movements in contemporary photography. Along with its accompanying exhibition, his book, The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion, stands as an important statement on a diverse set of young artists finding their own unique ways to break down the traditional boundaries separating two disciplines that have always been more intertwined than has been widely acknowledged. Yet just a few years ago, Sargent was virtually unknown to the fine-art establishment. He found his footing as an independent writer looking to spotlight rising black artists in his peer group (think: Jordan Casteel, Awol Erizku, and Jennifer Packer), then quickly expanded his scope to place their practices in conversation with a long line of artists of color whose pioneering work too often went unrecognized by the (usually) Western white male gatekeepers of their respective eras. His essays have since appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and several institutional publications, enlightening audiences on not only the work of particular photographers, but also on how their collective efforts are shifting the conventions of image-making—inside and outside the art world alike. On this week's episode, Sargent joins the podcast for a wide-ranging conversation touching on everything from Awol Erizku's instant-classic pregnancy-reveal photos of Beyoncé, to the leveling power of social media for a generation of image-makers eager to control their work's distribution, to how photography is simultaneously evolving in response to the coronavirus crisis and memorializing its effects on global culture.

Although the coronavirus pandemic is first and foremost a public-health emergency, it rapidly proved to be a deep financial emergency, too. With businesses and cultural institutions around the world forced to shutter en masse in the face of social-distancing regulations, questions loom large about how the global economy and the workforce will endure a prolonged period in which all but "essential" laborers must work from home—or not at all. This proposition is especially worrisome in the art industry, where so many artists and small businesses weather precarious conditions even in the best of times, making them especially vulnerable to financial ruin in our current extraordinary moment. Yet different Western nations are responding to the cultural crisis in very different ways. The United States hammered out a roughly $2.2 trillion rescue package that contained only $300 million specifically earmarked for arts and media causes, and conservative politicians attacked even this paltry amount as wasteful spending. In contrast, Germany announced a federal aid package featuring a whopping €50 billion ($54 billion) to be distributed to freelancers and small businesses, including those in the arts, while the country's culture minister praised artists as "not only indispensable, but also vital, especially now." Even more assistance came from the city-state of Berlin, which began funneling €5,000 payments to individual freelancers almost instantly with the promise that "there will be enough for everyone." On this week's episode, Artnet News's European editor Kate Brown calls in from her home in Berlin to discuss all sides of Germany's stunning cultural rescue plan. How did a country known for its sometimes-daunting bureaucracy manage to assemble such a generous bailout in such short order? What kind of political climate enabled it? And what does the package mean for the future of the arts in Berlin and Germany at large once the crisis finally ends?

Art history thrives on stories of fearless visionaries leaving behind the lives they've known to embark on journeys into uncertain lands for personal enrichment and artistic illumination. But few are as surprising as that of Agnes Pelton, the spiritualist painter who departed New York in 1932—alone, at the age of 50—to begin a new chapter in the California desert. There, she supported herself for years by selling realistic portraits and landscape paintings to tourists while, largely unbeknownst to others, she also pursued a connection to the divine through one of the most forward-looking painting practices of the early 20th century. A lifelong student of occult literature and unorthodox philosophies, Pelton languished in obscurity for decades before and after her death in 1961. But a handful of perceptive curators and scholars eventually recognized the importance of her otherworldly, semi-abstract canvases, which intermingle ethereal forms with a few identifiable symbols loaded with deeper meaning, such as stars and mountains. Pelton's supporters first succeeded in bringing her work to the larger art world's attention in the late 1980s, and more than 30 years later, she became the subject of a sweeping and critically admired solo exhibition that traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art this spring (before the museum, like so many others, was forced to close until further notice). On this week's episode, curator Barbara Haskell, who oversaw the Whitney's installation of Pelton's show, joins Andrew Goldstein to discuss the artist's scandal-plagued upbringing, all-consuming engagement with spiritualism, and lasting relevance in a world once again seeking greater meaning beyond the physical realm.

In the past month, the world—and by extension, the art world—has changed so drastically that it is almost unrecognizable. While the novel 2019 coronavirus continues to threaten countries around the globe and industries of all types, major and minor art institutions alike have shuttered until further notice, hundreds of galleries have temporarily closed their doors, and both artists and art lovers have been left to wonder how to respond in the social-distancing era. Like so many other staffers worldwide, the Art Angle team is now working remotely, harnessing the power of technology to bring you a comprehensive analysis of a cultural sphere beaten back by COVID-19—but not defeated. The enormity of the changes in progress demanded that Artnet News assemble an all-star cast to address how the pandemic is affecting the places we go to see art, the ways we buy art, and the nature of art itself. First, Artnet News executive editor Julia Halperin weighs in on how all museums, from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art to small regional nonprofits, are dealing with a sudden loss of income and an uncertain future as public gathering places. Then, art business editor Tim Schneider discusses the state of the gallery system and how digital platforms could help nimble dealers reckon with the temporary end of the social art-buying experience. Finally, art critic Ben Davis shares his thoughts on how art can play a role in community-building during and after a period of widespread trauma.

For its first-ever live episode, recorded at the 2020 Armory Show, the Art Angle brought on couture wunderkind Sander Lak, the creative director of the white-hot Sies Marjan, to discuss the intersection of art and fashion. The Dutch designer, who named his label after his parents, strutted out onto the sartorial landscape in 2016 with his debut collection, and he was officially anointed by the high-fashion establishment in 2018 when the esteemed Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) named him its Best New Designer. His collections are defined by deep jewel-tones and streamlined, sleek silhouettes that are beloved by celebrities and mere mortals alike—and as a longtime art enthusiast, Lak consistently finds fascinating ways to incorporate the work of boundary-pushing contemporary artists into his work. At the time of this conversation, the Guggenheim Museum in New York had just unveiled the epic exhibition "Countryside, the Future," an examination of the pastoral in an urbanized world by the visionary starchitect Rem Koolhaas and his studio, OMA. Sies Marjan, helmed by Lak, signed on as a sponsor of the exhibition, and Lak was given unrestricted access to Koolhaas and his trove of research on the show to mine as inspiration for his Fall 2020 fashion line. The result was more than a new collection of rustic accoutrement. It became a point of reckoning for Lak and his perspective on the fashion industry at large, as well as how his practice—and the discipline at large—relates to contemporary art.

Usually, the first weeks of March are intensely busy ones for the international art community, as they lead up to the Art Basel Hong Kong art fair: an unmissable event that galleries, museums, and even other cultural sectors in the region have used as an anchor to present their own very best programming to visitors from around the globe. This year, though, the staggering impact of the novel 2019 coronavirus has forced Art Basel to cancel its Asian fair, beginning a long cascade of postponed and canceled art events around the globe. For the residents of Hong Kong, life has been turbulent for much of the past year, ever since pro-democracy protests began roiling the city and its art scene in late March 2019. Although Hong Kong has been praised by the World Health Organization for its rapid and effective response to the virus—it harbors only about 115 cases of COVID-19 at this time, including just three fatalities—its ace public-health infrastructure has not exempted the city from an economic crisis first sparked by the demonstrations, then accelerated by the measures taken to protect its citizens from infection. Where does this latest upheaval leave Hong Kong's artistic community? Roughly two months after joining the Art Angle to discuss the effects of the protests, reporter Vivienne Chow calls in to this week's episode from her home in Hong Kong, where she and her fellow residents have been self-isolating for weeks. She provides a front-line view of both the challenges and the opportunities presented by the coronavirus, from the eerie reality of museums, art galleries, and auction houses devoid of people, to the ingenuity and resilience shown by the many businesses launching virtual exhibition and selling platforms to compensate for the loss of face-to-face interactions with collectors, curators, and enthusiasts. As the rest of the world tries to cope with the ever-changing conditions of the epidemic, Chow's account provides perspective, and even a measure of hope, for how life and culture can weather the crisis.