The Art Angle

The Louvre is among the largest, most-visited, and best-known museums in the world, and for nearly too many reasons to count. It’s home to some of the most celebrated works of art, from the Venus de Milo to the Mona Lisa. Its blended contemporary and historic architecture is astounding. And it also has a truly formidable past, stretching back through time, well before the building became a museum in 1793.An institution and collection that has been a quiet witness to so much history and change is bound to have stories to tell. Elaine Sciolino, contributing writer and former Paris bureau chief for the New York Times, has captured many of these stories in her newest book, Adventures in the Louvre: How to Fall in Love with the World’s Greatest Museum, which is out this April with Norton & Company. Sciolino is acclaimed for her chronicles of French history, and she’s the author of the New York Times bestseller The Only Street in Paris, The Seine, and La Seduction. And at the Louvre, she spoke to everyone, from the guards to the lead curators, and received unprecedented access to rooms I didn’t even know existed.Artnet's Senior Editor, Kate Brown, caught up with Elaine, who is based in Paris, to discuss the enigmatic and ever-enchanting Louvre, and what she learned from her exploration of its many halls, backrooms, and basements.

The artist Gertrude Abercrombie is not someone whose name I knew until very recently. But she’s definitely a name to know now.Born in 1909 in Austin, Texas and dying in 1977 in Chicago, Abercrombie was a painter of witchy and surreal canvases. They seem like lucid dreams, full of haunted landscapes, lone women, masked figures, barren trees, forked paths, and mysterious towers.In life, Abercrombie was a remarkable character. She was variously known as the “Queen of Chicago,” for her big presence in Hyde Park where she presided over a vibrant, self-curated social scene at a stately Victorian-era home; and as the “Jazz Witch,” for her enthusiastic support of Chicago jazz musicians in the 1940s and 50s—plus her personal affectation of wearing a peaked witch’s hat.Abercrombie was long a pretty obscure figure. But in recent years, her art has seen a remarkable upsurge of interest, culminating in an exciting touring exhibition of her paintings titled “Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery" on view now at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh.We've run multiple stories on Abercrombie recently, one by Katie White recounting her life and art ("Meet Surrealist Gertrude Abercrombie, the ‘Jazz Witch’ Who Captivated the Art World"), and one by Eileen Kinsella, tracking this once nearly forgotten artists’s recent return to the art market spotlight, nearly a half century after her death ("Once a ‘Regional Thing,’ Gertrude Abercrombie’s Enigmatic Art Is Selling for Huge Sums. Here’s Why"). In this episode, We talk to both of them, to get a full picture of this artist's life and legacy.

It’s the end of February 2025, and we are back for our Roundup podcast, talking about some of the news of the month.Today, we’re going to talk about:—the Frieze week of art fairs in L.A., which went ahead in the wake of the horrible fires that have mauled the city—some updates on the disgraced art adviser Lisa Schiff, who is back in the news—and the debate over whether a painting purchased for $50 at a Minnesota garage sale is actually a Vincent Van Gogh painting worth millions. We’ll give our opinionsAt the end, I'll also say a few words about the artist and art critic Walter Robinson, who passed away this month.Our art critic, Ben Davis opines with Kate Brown, Artnet’s senior editor and co-host of this Art Angle, calling from Berlin, and Annie Armstrong, Artnet’s Wet Paint columnist, in New York.

Caspar David Friedrich is considered one of the most important German painters, and his landscape works live large in the cultural consciousness in Germany and beyond. You have probably seen the 19th-century artist's most famous painting, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, a lone figure that you see from the back looking out over a wide valley of cliffs and mists.To mark what would have been the 250th birthday of Friedrich, over the last year, major institutions have been celebrating the artist’s works: a vast oeuvre of deeply contemplative, almost surreal landscapes that broke with their times. A string of major exhibitions took place throughout 2024 across Germany, and this month, that roving program reached its final stop with a blockbuster exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. “The Soul of Nature” is on view through May 11, and it is the largest showing of Friedrich’s works to come together in the U.S., including an impressive amount of loans of works that rarely travel (Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog is one of them). Shows in 2024 in Europe included "Art for a New Age" at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, "Unending Landscapes" at the Berlin State Museums, and "Where it All Began" at the Dresden State Collections.Art Critic Ben Davis, recently saw the show at the Met, which opened this month, and Senior Editor, Kate Brown, had the pleasure of seeing the Dresden exhibition in December, which happens to be the city where Friedrich lived and made most of his famous works. Davis joins Brown on the podcast to discuss Friedrich's enduring legacy, and they dive into some of the major currents in his work, as well as the backstory that underpins his serene nature scenes: shifting ideas about religion and the spirit transforming European consciousness and a very tumultuous time in the continent's history.

“Identity politics” is among the most contentious terms in recent debates about art. And now, the most powerful people in the United States are blaming just about everything on “DEI” and “wokeness.” The very concept of diversity as a positive ideal seems to be under threat.At the same time, so far there has been nowhere near the protest you would expect. Civil society feels stunned. At least part of this seems to be confusion about what has gone wrong to bring us here, with sections of the population now seeming to reject or just tune out progressive ideas that were all but dominant in mainstream culture just a few short years ago.Maybe backlash was always inevitable. But how do we find a way forward? How do you talk about real criticisms of what may have made the social justice culture of the recent past confusing or alienating—without adopting the terms of a truly destructive culture war that is now all around?A few weeks ago, we had the art critic Dean Kissick on the podcast to talk about his December cover story for Harper’s magazine, which argued that identity politics had, in his words, “ruined contemporary art.” In Ben Davis' essay for Artnet responding to him, called “Will the Art World Go Post-Woke in 2025?”, Davis concluded by saying that those looking for a constructive way forward should read the theorist Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò book Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else).Táíwò teaches philosophy at Georgetown University and has written pieces for outlets including Foreign Policy, The Nation, and The New Yorker. He’s written two books of political theory, Reconsidering Reparations and Elite Capture. Davis has found the concepts that he’s developed, which include “elite capture,” “deference politics,” and “being-in-the-room privilege” very useful in thinking about some of these problems, which are some of the most important problems of the day—so Davis brought him on to discuss.

Art comes in all shapes and sizes, of course—but recently it has been getting smaller. Or at least that is what is argued in an article by Kate Brown, Artnet Senior Editor and Art Angle co-host. It's called "Why is Small Art So Big Right Now?"Not so long ago, the trend was in the other direction. Gigantism and grandiosity were the rage, and artwork stretched to environmental scale. There's still plenty of that, of course—don't worry. But Kate gathers together a number of signs and talks to a number of artists and art dealers, and it all points towards a growing interest in smaller, more intimate kinds of art experiences.And it turns out there's a lot to think about in the question of little art—about the contemporary pressures on art-makers, and about what makes an artwork rewarding to look at in the first place. So, this week, we have Kate on the podcast to talk with Artnet National Critic Ben Davis about her essay.

We are back this week with our monthly edition of the Art Angle Roundup, where co-hosts Kate Brown and Ben Davis are joined by a guest to discuss some of the biggest headlines of the month. This week, Caroline Goldstein, acting managing editor of Artnet News, joins the show. It’s been quite the January. Though it is typically a slow month, some major stories have transpired. We’ll be talking about censorship in the museum world in the U.S., looking in particular at the case of two Sally Mann photographs that were seized from a museum in Dallas, Texas.We will also talk about the passing of the filmmaker David Lynch on January 15. Lynch is famous for his films, but he was also a respected artist with his fair share of institutional exhibitions under his belt. He has always been a painter, but do we like his paintings? We discuss. Lynch has been represented by Pace Gallery since 2022. We take a look at his artistic legacy and his enigmatic ways.Last but not least, New York’s prestigious Metropolitan Museum has ventured into the blockchain world of all places with a free-to-play video game that you can access on Web3. The game was launched this month together with TR Lab, a platform that aims to connect artists and technologists and creates and sells fine art collectibles. The Met's new game, called Art Links, does weekly drops. If you win you can collect badges in your OpenSea wallet and win IRL prizes. Sound fun? Maybe not? We each played it and gave it our honest review.

In this conversation, Dean Kissick, a well-known critic and writer whose essay "The Painted Protest" ignited debate on art's political role, shares his insights. He discusses the shifting dynamics of contemporary art amid political turmoil, expressing concern over complacency and performative activism in major institutions. Kissick critiques recent art trends for lacking depth, while advocating for a revival of genuine creativity. He also delves into the influence of social media on artistic expression and identity, highlighting the complexities faced by today’s artists.

Last weekend, warnings to evacuate were issued to the suburban westside neighborhood of Brentwood, which includes the esteemed Getty Center, home to one of the city’s most prized art collections. After more than a week of burning, L.A.’s devastating wildfires, which began on January 7, are still not fully contained, forcing ongoing evacuation orders around the coastal city. It is the worst fire event in L.A.’s history and has taken 24 lives.As part of the Getty Trust, the museum features European paintings, including Van Gogh’s Irises, and works by Rembrandt, Monet, Manet, and Peter Paul Rubens. It also houses Greek, Roman, and Etruscan art from the Neolithic to Late Antiquity—some of which is partially held at its second campus, the Getty Villa. Days before the threat of fire reached the museum’s main venue over the weekend, the Villa was already grappling with the Palisades blaze, which ended up destroying or damaging around 4,000 structures and spreading over 23,000 acres. As the fires raged around Los Angeles, intensified by strong winds, media imagery circulating online showed brush burning around the Getty Villa in the Palisades.This prompted panic about the security of the collection. The institution, however, has long billed itself as a highly fire-safe institution. Built in 1997, the Getty Center has been described as “a marvel of anti-fire engineering.” Throughout the last week, its team has worked tirelessly to defend the property and has communicated daily about the safety and security of its sites. Unfortunately, many other properties—including thousands of homes, businesses, and smaller cultural institutions—have been destroyed. Many cultural workers, collectors, and gallerists are among those who lost their homes, and artists’ homes and studios—including entire bodies of work and archives—have been irretrievably lost. The extent of livelihoods destroyed in Los Angeles is truly heartbreaking. We will link to resources in the show notes where you can find out how to help. We also have a story on our website providing frequent updates on the state of the cultural scene.This week, the J. Paul Getty Trust and a coalition of local and international cultural institutions announced a $12 million emergency relief fund for members of the Los Angeles arts community affected by the wildfires.Katherine E. Fleming, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, joins me on The Art Angle to discuss her experience of the wildfires, the Getty’s state-of-the-art prevention protocols for its valuable art, and what the fires mean for Los Angeles’ cultural scene as it eventually seeks to rebuild.

Can you think of a work of art that truly thrilled you? Maybe you can—and if you can, maybe it even literally made you shiver, or sent a chill up your spine.This is the phenomena that is called “Aesthetic Chills.” It’s tied to strong emotional reactions to music or dramatic moments in fiction, or even to works of visual art. The effect is a bit mysterious, though it’s also associated with some of our most memorable art encounters.What does it mean for an artwork to be literally “spine-tingling?” Why does it happen when it happens, and why is it so rare? My colleague and Art Angle co-host Ben Davis wrote a two-art essay last year on this fascinating phenomena.Ben's essay argued that this was more than just a technical subject. He thought that it might even point towards some vital parts of what make art important in our lives that don’t get enough attention. Based on the reaction of readers, many seem to agree—we also published an essay of readers responding with their own examples of artworks that had the effect on them. So, to kick the year off, I thought I'd talk with him about "Aesthetic Chills."—Kate BrownRead the original articles referenced in the piece:—"Unlocking the Secrets of Art That Gives You Chills"—"Why Only Some Artworks Give You Chills—And Most Just Don’t"—"Readers Weigh In on Which Artworks Give Them Chills"