The Art Angle

Anyone who's driven by a car dealership in the U.S. has probably seen them: Inflatable nylon figures with smiley faces, bending and twisting in the breeze. These roadside attention getters are known in the marketing world as "tube men" or "sky dancers." Paul Chan calls them "Breathers," and they have played a central role in the artist's practice since he debuted his own uncanny renditions of the dancers in 2017 at Greene Naftali gallery in New York.The swaying figures also symbolize the artist's own winding approach to his practice, and the need, sometimes, to take a breather. After working primarily with video early in his career—including violating sanctions to shoot a video essay in Baghdad during the U.S. occupation—Chan grew exhausted by screens. He left art production for five years and opened his own publishing house, the beloved indie outfit Badlands Unlimited, which has put out eclectic titles ranging from Saddam Hussein's speeches on democracy to the interactive e-book What Is a Kardashian?Chan made his return to visual art after realizing that those car-lot tube men could be turned into offscreen animations. Now, the "Breathers" are the centerpiece of a major solo show at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, open through July 16. Artnet News's deputy editor Rachel Corbett sat down with Chan—a recent winner of the MacArthur 'Genius' grant—to talk about the tyranny of screens, his early adoption of crypto, and the importance, in every artist's life, of simply taking a break.

Well, what do you know? The year of 2022 has officially come to a close, and here at The Art Angle, we are in a reflective. It was an amazing year for the show. We interviewed luminaries like Venice Biennale curator to Cecilia Alemani, artist Marina Abramović, critic Jerry Saltz; we delved deep into the scandalous history of Documenta as well as the whole Board Ape Yacht Club phenomenon, and the new revolution and how we think about surrealism today.The turning of the calendar year, however, also marks a big change around here, with Julia Halpern, Artnet News's executive editor and frequent Art Angle host, moving on to new adventures. She was an invaluable force in shaping the show and shaping Artnet News generally, so she'll be very dearly missed and has our deepest gratitude. We wish her the best of luck.So with all this in mind, as The Art Angle takes some time off to prep for what is looking like an incredible 2023, we thought we would leave you with a repeat of one of our favorite episodes of the year. An episode we think may also prove resonant in the year to come. Well, it may be both crypto and literal winter right now but Tim Schneider's sweeping and truly ambitious Metaverse explainer episode provides a really terrific look at the way that art may evolve into its next digital era. We hope you enjoy it. See you in 2023 and Happy New Year from The Art Angle.

Well, the end of the year is upon us and it is also the end of an era here at Artnet News. Our fearless executive editor, Julia Halperin, is leaving her post. As a sendoff for Julia, we thought we'd in the year, as we usually do with something lighthearted, The Artnet News Year End Quiz. Given the fact that no one has spent more time editing news digests early in the morning, editing art news through the day, and researching the art market, Julia is our perfect contestant and we hope that you at home, our Artnet News Super fans, can play along as well. 

Inside the art world, one of the defining narratives of the past decade has been a renewed push for gender and racial equity. Much of the attention in this realm has focused on the dramatic overrepresentation of white male artists in everything from museum collections and exhibition programs, to auction sales and gallery rosters.Overtures to correcting the imbalance have been so prevalent in trade-media headlines, institutional marketing, and day-to-day conversations that many, if not most, art professionals seem to be confident that the industry is slowly but steadily reversing generations of deeply embedded racism and sexism. But how much has the art world really rebalanced the scales?It turns out that the answer is much less than we hoped––at least if we look past the hype at the actual data. Enter the latest edition of the Burns-Halperin Report, a multipronged data-led project helmed by Charlotte Burns, the veteran art journalist, podcaster, and founder of Studio Burns, and Artnet News executive editor Julia Halperin.At the core of the Burns-Halperin Report is a one-of-a-kind database encompassing hundreds of thousands of entries painstakingly compiled from U.S. museums, global auction houses, and top commercial galleries. The data quantifies how little has changed for artists in three historically underrepresented demographics since as far back as 2002. It also leaves the rest of us facing a lot of hard questions about why the art trade at large believes it’s doing so much better at neutralizing its biases than it actually is.On this week’s episode, Charlotte and Julia join Artnet News Art Business Editor, Tim Schneider to walk us through the report itself, how it came together, and what it all means

On October 14, two activists, Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland, walked into the National Gallery in London and threw a can of tomato soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers while wearing shirts that read JUST STOP OIL. The action was part of a larger cycle of disruptive occupations and direct action by environmentalists in the UK, demanding dramatic action to cut fossil fuels in the face of climate change—but the Van Gogh soup attack by far drew the most media attention. Indeed, the tactic of using attacks on artworks to get their message out has caught on with campaigners this year, with environmentalists in at least half a dozen countries making headlines with spectacular actions in museums—gluing themselves to famous pieces, spray-painting the walls around them, or throwing food at artworks.These actions have, in turn, touched off a fierce debate among observers and activists alike about the art-attack tactic. Is it the kind of desperate move needed to shock the public into action when nothing else seems to work? Or do the actions repel otherwise sympathetic observers, isolating a movement that needs to scale up dramatically?London-based art journalist Farah Nayeri is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, and the author of the recent book Takedown: Art and Power in the Digital Age, which looks at how the digitally empowered activism of the last ten years has changed what the public expects from a museum. In an essay for Artnet News responding to these new museum actions, she wrote about the long history of vandalizing art for a cause, from suffragette Mary Richardson slashing Velazquez’s Rokeby Venus more than a century ago, to protests within British museums against oil giant BP’s sponsorship over the last decade.This week, Artnet News's national art critic Ben Davis spoke to Nayeri about this history, and what the stakes of the new protests truly are.

What does it mean to be an art critic today? How do you choose what to write about and how do you even choose what to look at in an age where seeing art in person, which used to be the most common way people encountered art, has now arguably become the rarest?In this episode, Andrew Goldstein speaks with Jerry Saltz, the most famous, most lionized, and arguably the most influential art critic we have. A self-described "failed artist" who only became a professional critic at age 41, Jerry wrote for the Village Voice, Artnet Magazine (the predecessor of Artnet News), and other publications before becoming New York's resident art critic in 2006, where he's been on a run of glory that has included winning the 2018 Pulitzer for criticism.But while he's well known for his exuberant, beautifully wrought criticism, he's even better known as what might be termed an "art critic in the expanded field." He shares his opinions every day with some half a million followers on Twitter and Instagram, alongside frequent TV appearances and a half dozen books, the latest of which, called Art is Life, has just been published by Riverhead Books.

This special episode of the Art Angle is produced in partnership with Belmond. Recently, four photographers got a dream assignment. They were dispatched into the Maya Riviera to capture the distinctiveness and beauty of the landscape. But it wasn’t all as tranquil as it sounds. The creators battled hurricane season and extremely tight deadlines to get the shots they wanted.The result of their hard work is “Fotografía Maroma,” a collection of photographs commissioned by Belmond. The images will go on display at Maroma, Belmond’s hotel in the Riviera Maya, when it reopens in May 2023. Before then, however, they are going on a world tour. It starts with a display in the Miami Design District during Art Basel Miami Beach and continues with presentations at ZonaMaco in Mexico City in February and Photo London in May.In partnership with Belmond, the Art Angle spoke with the curators behind the project. Fariba Farshad is co-founder and director of Photo London and Patricia Conde is the founder of Patricia Conde Galeria in Mexico City. Together, they gave us the lowdown on why they chose these four photographers, how the project came together in record time, and what it shows us about Mexico’s vibrant photography scene.

What do Sterling Ruby, Oscar Murillo, Kennedy Yanko, and Aomoako Boafo have in common? Beyond being some of the most sought-after contemporary artists of the last decade, they are all veterans of the prestigious Rubell Museum Residency program. Helmed by its namesake founders, the mega-collecting duo Don and Mera Rubell, the residency program is something of a hit-maker—call it "the Rubell effect." Beyond minting art-market stars, the Rubells now have two museums, a 100,000 square-foot campus with more than 50,000 square-footage dedicated to galleries in Miami's Allapattah, and a newly opened 32,000-square-foot outpost in Southwest Washington D.C.The Rubell's art collecting began when they were newlyweds\ who would squirrel away $25 from Mera's teaching salary to put toward acquisitions while Don was in medical school. Now, along with their son Jason and daughter Jennifer, they own one of the largest private collections of contemporary art in the world, with more than 7,400 works of art by the likes of Kehinde Wiley, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Catherine Opie.On the heels of their DC museum's grand opening, and just weeks before they will hold court at Art Basel in Miami Beach, Artnet News's senior reporter Katya Kazakina caught up with Don, Jason, and Mera to discuss the origins of their collection, the symbiotic relationship between art and real estate, and their famous Midas touch for sussing out the hottest emerging artists.

You've seen it. A woman in a blue turban set against a black background looking over her shoulder like you just called her name. She's wearing a heavy pearl earring in one ear, and her skin is so luminous it looks like she swallowed a light bulb. Yes, I'm talking about Girl with a Pearl Earring, one of the most famous paintings in the world. It's been reproduced countless times on mugs, t-shirts, and pillows. It has inspired poems, novels, and movies. But the artist who created Girl with a Pearl Earring, he remains shrouded in mystery.Strangely little is known about Johannes Vermeer. He lived in Holland in the 17th century and died in 1675 at the age of 43. He made fewer than 36 paintings. And audiences around the globe are fascinated by his portrayals of quiet domesticity. It's always been assumed he worked in the same kind of solitude that he often depicted in his paintings. But new research is challenging that assumption. Over the past several years, museums have used cutting edge technology to get under the surface of Vermeer and learn more about how he actually worked. To discuss Vermeer's many secrets and the artist we thought we knew, Executive Editor, Julia Halperin, spoke with Kriston Capps, a Washington DC based contributor to Artnet News.

It’s been a challenging few years for art museums. But Sandra Jackson Dumont, the director and CEO of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, has never felt more energized about their potential. And that feeling is infectious.At the most recent American Alliance of Museums conference, Jackson-Dumont opened her keynote speech with a love song by ’70s soul singer Donny Hathaway. Then she asked the audience: “Don’t you want people to see your institutions that way?” For more than 20 years, Jackson-Dumont has been a force in education and public programming, launching enormously popular initiatives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Seattle Art Museum. She has spent her career blurring distinctions between fine art and popular culture, and creating alternative ways for the public to interact with art and museums. This mission has followed her to the Lucas Museum. Slated to open in 2025, the museum founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson prioritizes art and audiences that have not always been taken seriously by the elite art world. It’s clear Jackson-Dumont has a long track record of breaking new ground. That’s why we chose her as one of Artnet News’s New Innovators for 2022. The Innovators List will be published in full later this month. Ahead of the release, Jackson-Dumont spoke with Artnet News contributor Janelle Zara about how she is challenging the museum model as we know it.