The Art Angle

In a new feature film called Inside, an art heist goes terribly wrong for a thief named Nemo.Nemo is played by the world-renowned actor Willem DaFoe, well-loved by the art world already for his performance in the 2018 film At Eternity’s Gate, where he played Vincent van Gogh.In the ultra-contemporary plot of Inside, Dafoe’s character Nemo is not a world famous artist, but rather an anonymous robber who’s after a self-portrait by Egon Schiele. The artwork is not where it is supposed to be inside the ultra-modern penthouse he’s just broken into. Carefully laid plans seem to be going awry. Precious minutes are lost. Then, the alarm system locks down, leaving Nemo sealed off from the world while in the center of Manhattan. If you haven’t seen Insideyet, be advised that there are spoilers scattered throughout this episode.So, Nemo is now stuck in a resplendent box of glass, steel, and concrete, with little more than some exotic fish, luxury furniture, and a multimillion dollar art collection. On-screen alone for practically the entire film, Dafoe’s character begins to battle against the degradation of his body and spirit—to deal with the latter, the artworks in the apartment become something like a central character, as does Nemo’s own blossoming creativity.The artworks in the apartment, which were carefully curated, drive the plot and deepen the themes. There is a 1999 work by Maurizio Cattelan, a large photograph of a man taped to the wall with tons of duct tape, sarcastically titled A Perfect Day. There is also David Horvitz’s 2019 neon that hangs over the character’s struggle, with a sort of torturous prescience: it says “All the time that will come after this moment.” To build out the idea of a real art collection, there are more emerging stars. Kosovan artists Petrit Halilaj and Shkurte Halilaj’s work for the 2017 Venice Biennale is worn by Nemo when the penthouse’s temperature drops. And a video work by Julian Charrière and Julius von Bismarck from 2016, which was filmed at the exclusion zone surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, is among the artworks in the film that conjure questions around humanity, planetary survival, and climate crisis—which is an undercurrent theme of the movie.On this week’s episode, European editor Kate Brown speaks to the film’s director Vasilis Katsoupis and art curator Leonardo Bigazzi about this captivating and claustrophobic feature, which had its world premiere at the Berlinale film festival last month and is about to hit theaters in the United States.

All around Europe, there are small brass bricks inlaid into the ground before the front doors of apartment buildings and houses. These bricks are like a decentralized memorial—they are known as Stolpersteine—which means stumbling stones—and engraved on each one is the name of a citizen who was persecuted or exterminated by the Nazis during World War II.At an apartment building in Berlin that stands at Wielandstrasse 15, you will find the name of Charlotte Salomon on one of these stumbling stones. As it says on the little brass brick, she was born in 1917 here; she fled Germany to France in 1939; she was interned at a French concentration camp in Drancy; she was deported and murdered in Auschwitz in 1943.Charlotte was also a visionary young artist, and she created a hugely ambitious work of art called Life or Theater. Made in just over a year while living in exile in France, Life or Theater consists of more than 1,000 individual gouache paintings, sectioned into three acts.It is an artwork that defies easy categorization. It is something like an autobiography, but also not quite. There are characters that are just like her own family and friends, but their names are slightly changed. There is music that is meant to accompany her vividly painted scenes, which tell the story of her coming of age as a young woman and an artist.The story shows what played out on Wielandstrasse in Berlin as the Nazis rose to power; the persecution of her family; the death of her mother from suicide, and later her grandmother. It tells about her suffering in exile, it discusses a murder. It also captures the birth of a brilliant artist who finds a lifeline in making art. It is hard to neatly summarize everything Life or Theater addresses—but as Charlotte put it herself, the piece is “something crazy special.” Not only is the work picturesque in the way it is painted and formally ground-breaking, Charlotte managed to achieve something deeply intimate and personal but also universal with this work. She gave it to a friend for safekeeping before she was taken to Auschwitz and it survived the war and is now in the possession of the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam.People do not seem to be as aware of Salomon as they should be giving the pioneering, avant-garde nature of this artwork. On the occasion of an upcoming exhibition of Life or Theater at the Lenbachhaus in Munich, Artnet News’s Kate Brown was joined by the show’s curator Irene Faber, who is also the curator of collections at the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam, and an expert on Charlotte’s life and art.

Given the manifold political, climate, and technological crises unfolding just two months into 2023, one wonders if that ominous future our species so fears is much closer than we anticipated. It is a tense and dramatic time, but it does further underscore the importance of the cultural figure Hito Steyerl.The German filmmaker’s bold artworks investigate emerging technologies and media, and she often sites these inquiries within society and politics, globalization, and capitalism. Yet despite the complexity of the subject matter and her research-intensive process, Steyerl’s works are readily enthralling, often manifesting as highly ambitious, immersive architectural environments.It is no small wonder that her work has reached a global stage. Last year, her largest-ever retrospective, called “I Will Survive,” wrapped its European tour at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. And just last month, her exhibition called “This is the Future” opened at the Portland Art Museum, where it is on view until mid-June.On this week’s episode, European editor Kate Brown spoke to Steyerl to tackle some of the questions about what artificial intelligence, the metaverse, crypto, and an increasingly imperiled natural world might mean for us.

In ancient mythology, figures like Athena and Aphrodite were exalted as paragons of virtue, strength, and beauty. Artnet and Cadillac invited three artists to interpret the goddess theme through their individual lenses and to create new work to celebrate the return of the brand’s Goddess hood ornament on the new ultra-luxury EV CELESTIQ. These images will be offered through an online auction presented by Artnet to benefit the nonprofit organization Free Arts NYC.Last week in Los Angeles, the three contemporary photographers—Ming Smith, Petra Collins, and Dannielle Bowmann—joined Artnet News’s executive producer Sonia Manalili to discuss their unique approaches to the medium, and how to interpret the iconic goddess imagery for a new generation.

The Swedish painter Hilma af Klint died nearly 80 years ago in relative obscurity, but you might not immediately realize this if you look her up today. Her paintings, large-scale, vivid, symbolic, and abstract masterpieces infused with mysticism and spirituality, seem uncannily contemporary. But that is not the only reason; af Klint is also now a bonafide star, an art-world household name. In the past several years alone there has been an explosion of interest in her work, catalyzed in no small part via her blockbuster 2018 Guggenheim show in New York called “Paintings for the Future.”Af Klint’s body of work, which bravely departed from the figurative art that was popular at the turn of the 20th century when she was working, predates the first Western abstract compositions by titans like Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian. It was a staggering revelation, to say the least. But moving beyond the elevator pitch and the catchphrases that have emerged around af Klint as we rush to fit her into an art historical canon that has woefully excluded women, is essential. Up until recently, many of the intricacies of her life, work, ambitions, and friendships, were not well-understood.That is part of the reason why Julia Voss decided to write the first-ever biography on the artist, which came out in English at the end of last year. Voss, a prominent German journalist, art critic, researcher, and curator, spent the better part of a decade learning Swedish and meticulously retracing af Klint’s life and her movements in Europe. Voss combed through more than 20,000 notebooks that belonged to af Klint as well as her massive archive, which the artist had left to her nephew. The biography includes several revelations about af Klint’s inner life, desires, and activities.We are headed into another two years that is sure to bring increased attention and reflection on the work of Af Klint. Her massive catalog raisonne is due out next month, edited by Swedish curator and art critic Daniel Birnbaum. An exhibition called “Swedish Ecstasy” at BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels opens this week. Next year, for the first time ever, there will be a show dedicated to Kandinsky and af Klint, curated by Birnbaum and Voss. On this week's episode, Voss joins Artnet News European editor Kate Brown to dive into some of the more fascinating and under-considered aspects of the enigmatic and groundbreaking artist.

One art movement has become a household name in a way that few recent art movements can match. This is Afrofuturism. From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, installing an Afrofuturist period room to the blockbuster movie Black Panther and its sequel to an upcoming survey of the movement at the National Museum of African American history and culture, Afrofuturism is being canonized in art and beyond.It's an extraordinarily rich tradition, bringing together influences from experimental jazz and Detroit techno sci-fi and fantasy, art and technology. With Black History Month here, we decided to dig into Afrofuturist art history with Ytasha Womack. Womack is the author of Afrofuturism, The World of Black Sci-fi and Fantasy Culture. She's also an artist herself, actively working in the tradition now.So how can you define the afro futurist aesthetic? What are some of its touchstones? And why has there been such a surge of excitement around Afrofuturism in the recent past? Artnet News National Art Critic, Ben Davis, sits down with Womack to find out.

For Art Basel, the most well known art fair in the world, the fourth quarter of 2022 marked the end of one era, and the beginning of another. In early November, leadership of the company transitioned to Noah Horowitz, who returned after a roughly year-long stint at Sotheby’s to become the first ever CEO of the same fair brand where he served as director of the Americas from 2015 to 2021.But clearing Horowitz’s path to the chief executive’s office was the one and only Marc Spiegler. Spiegler shocked the art world in October 2022 by announcing that he would end his decade-long campaign as Art Basel’s global director at the end of that year (though he will stay on as an advisor through June of this one).During his time at the helm, Spiegler oversaw a transformation of the company across multiple dimensions, including doubling the annual number of Art Basel fairs; dramatically expanding the company’s digital presence; quintupling the size of its staff; responding to a global pandemic; and much more.It’s not an exaggeration to say that, if you look closely at these shifts, they mirror back some of the most important ways that the art business as a whole has morphed during the 21st century. Art Business Editor, Tim Schneider, sits down with Marc in mid-January for the first extended interview he has given in his post-Basel professional life.

Born in Norilsk, an industrial Siberian town inside the Arctic Circle, Nadya Tolokonnikova was just 18 when she moved to Moscow and became a founding member of the Russian street art and performance art collective Voina in 2007. It was her strong feminist leanings that then inspired her to cofound Pussy Riot, known for playing incendiary highly political punk music while wearing balaclava head coverings.The group rose to fame following a now legendary 2012 performance of the song “Punk Prayer,” at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior, when Tolokonnikova and two other Pussy Riot members were arrested and then convicted of “hooliganism.” She spent close to two years incarcerated in a brutal labor camp in Mordovia, Russia. But her time behind bars has not deterred Tolokonnikova from continuing to act as an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin, or from leveraging the power of art in the name of activism.This week marks the opening of her first ever gallery exhibition for Pussy Riot, held at Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles. The centerpiece of the exhibition is the new performance Putin’s Ashes, in which Tolokonnikova leads a coven of women in a witch-like ritual to drive the Russian president from power, burning a giant portrait of Putin to the ground in the process. Ahead of the show’s opening, Artnet News senior reporter Sarah Cascone spoke to Tolokonnikova about the challenges of presenting conceptual performance art in a white cube gallery, and how she continues to remain optimistic about political change in her native country despite the ongoing invasion of Ukraine and her continued persecution at the hands of the Russian government, which in December 2021 labeled her a “foreign agent.”

Here at Artnet, we typically look to thorough data and the hard facts to tell us what to make of the wily, unpredictable art world. But every now and then, it’s important to remember that ours is an industry based on unorthodox minds and a reverence for avant garde expression, so magical thinkers ought to remain a legitimate resource to our team of reporters. To that end, our Artnet News Pro Wet Paint columnist, Annie Armstrong recently spoke with Micki Pellerano, who has earned himself the nickname "The Art Warlock", to discuss the occult's role in the art world, and why so many esteemed minds in our industry look in earnest to astrology for guidance.Pellerano is an artist himself, working mainly in drawing and sculpture to express his affinity to ritual symbolism and esotericism. His work has been on view at esteemed spaces such as MoMA, the Serpentine Gallery, Brooklyn Museum, and the 2019 Venice Biennale. More than that, though, he has also been the art world's go-to astrologer, hosting one-on-one sessions to art world luminaries such as Jenny Hval and Alissa Bennet from his studio in Brooklyn.Pellerano’s study of the occult is ongoing, and in this conversation, he asserts his belief that astrology's impact is inextricable from the advancement of humankind, and certainly from the canon of art history.

Well, it's happened again. Tim Schneider has gone prophetic, again.At the beginning of every year, our trusted art business editor goes through the Sisyphean task of assessing his predictions for the most recently-wrapped year in the art world, and lays down his prophecies for the next 365 days to come.As is now tradition, for his first Gray Market column of the year, Soothsayer Schneider makes a set of predictions specific to the murky machinations of the art market, each of which must be able to be proven true or false 12 months later. (For the purposes of the podcast recording, we've homed in on four very specific predictions to elaborate on, but the full list of eight is available to readers.)From the rise of artist-branded merchandise (think Basquiat-emblazoned hoodies, dog collars, and phone cases) to the death of an art fair, plus predictions about the state of the market amid skyrocketing interest rates and the ongoing war in Ukraine, here's what you should be prepared for in the year to come.