The Art Angle

Right now there is a powerful, highly ambitious, and deeply relevant art show in New York that weaves together the histories of conservation and American art in a way most people haven't seen before.It's a quick jag from the city across the Rip Van Winkle Bridge into Catskill, New York, but light years away from the bustling metropolis, where on either side of the river are the historic homes of the famed Hudson River School painters Thomas Cole and Frederic Church in New York’s Hudson River Skywalk Region.Inside those homes—the Thomas Cole National Historic Site and Olana State Historic Site—sprawls the show titled "Cross-pollination: Head, Cole, Church, and Our Contemporary Moment," with art that spans the mid-19th century to today, the exhibition is built around a suite of 16 bravura paintings of hummingbirds titled "The Gems of Brazil" by the little known Hudson River School artists, Martin Johnson Heade, and it takes flight from there exploring a network of interconnections between art, science, and the natural world.It also provides rich insight into the story of the relationships at the heart of the show between Heade, Thomas Cole, and Frederic Church, three of the greatest visionary artists America has ever known.This week on the podcast, Andrew Goldstein is joined by Thomas Cole National Historic Site curator Kate Menconeri to discuss how these historic artists first began thinking about ideas of conservation and preservation, and how contemporary artists have taken up the mantle to encourage a new generation not only to appreciate nature, but how to give back what for years we've been taking from it.

This episode is devoted to Hunter Biden. Why? If you read the news, click on any cable network or walk down the street. You've probably heard that everybody is in a tizzy about the son of the president of the United States art career and his overnight emergence as a seemingly unlikely market darling. So to talk about Hunter Biden's art practice; how he views it; how the industry is embracing; the static it's generating the political sphere and what it all means, we’ve pulled together a heavy hitting roster of Artnet News experts.  Senior Reporter, Katya Kazakina, Art Business Editor, Tim Schneider and Chief Art Critic, Ben Davis join the show.

This week, the subject of our show is less a story and more of a phenomenon, and his name is Simon de Pury.A legendary auctioneer who has actually been called the "Mick Jagger of auctions," de Pury has led a storied career in art. A baron by heredity who was born in the Swiss art capital of Basel, de Pury entered the art business with the help of the legendary dealer Ernst Beyeler and swiftly blazed a trail of glory.He rose through the ranks of Sotheby’s to stage the first ever contemporary art auction in the Soviet Union in 1988, and ultimately became the house's Chief Worldwide Auctioneer before going on to forge the Phillips de Pury auction house—now known as Phillip's—inject the stale auction world with a new night club-esque vitality, and then move on to a string of illustrious businesses bearing the de Pury name.Along the way he has starred in Bravo’s reality show, “Work of Art, The Next Great Artist”; was the subject of a four-part BBC documentary; wrote a juicy tell all memoir; and most recently made a memorable cameo in the Netflix series Emily in Paris.De Pury is also a columnist for Artnet News Pro, writing a monthly dispatch aptly called "The Hammer," that is full of invaluable perspective on how the art market really operates along with intimate play-by-plays from the ultimate art world insider.This week, the art world mainstay joins Andrew Goldstein to discuss his career past and present, why hip hop jewelry is an undervalued market, and what he's looking forward to on the horizon.

Last month, a new name entered the art discussion when a suite of five digital artworks sold in a special sale at Christie's auction house in New York for $2.1 million. And it's a name you might not expect: Fewocious. That's the nom de art of Victor Langlois, an 18-year-old Seattle artist, originally from a family of El Salvadoran immigrants in Las Vegas. Sold during Pride month, the opus is titled 'Hello, i’m Victor (FEWOCiOUS) and This Is My Life' and tells a very personal story. Via Fewocious's signature bright colors, graffiti-like text, and distorted faces, the work is about, as Christie's advertised it, "the journey through Fewocious teen years so far, growing up as a transgender male in an abusive household." In fact, it turns out that the works served as Victor's coming out as trans to the NFT world, at the same time making him the youngest artist ever to be sold at Christie's. Just a year ago, Fewocious was selling paintings for $95 online and just beginning to experiment with NFTs. Now, he's made a reported $16 million, and is the talk of the town. Artnet News's Chief Art Critic Ben Davis caught up with Fewocious about what has been a remarkable journey on many levels. 

The Art Angle team is taking this week off, but we'll be back July 9 with a new episode. In the meantime, here's one of our favorite recent episodes, featuring photographer Dawoud Bey on the occasion of his retrospective, "An American Project," on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.After former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to over 22 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd, the racial justice protests of last summer viscerally came back into the public consciousness, reigniting conversations in the news and in households everywhere about the reality of the Black experience in America.These issues take new focus at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where a retrospective of the photographer Dawoud Bey presents his magisterial exploration of the subject, in the form of his penetrating portraits of Black lives from all points on the national compass. Ranging in registers from jubilation to agony, to ingenious self-invention, to blissed-out hope, the show is curated by Elizabeth Sherman and SFMoMA curator Corey Keller.Open through October 3, 2021, the show is titled “An American Project” and it is a project that is very much still in the works. It so happens that this is a very big year for Dawoud Bey. The winner of a 2017 MacArthur “genius” grant and a professor at Columbia College in Chicago, the artist has already been the subject of two other retrospectives in his 46-year career, but this one at the Whitney is not only his largest, it’s also one of the largest surveys of a Black American photographer ever.On this week’s episode, Bey joins Andrew Goldstein by Zoom to discuss how his childhood and early exposure to work by African Americans informed his interest in photography, his ongoing collaboration with David Hammons, and what he hopes visitors will take away from the Whitney exhibition. 

Today one of the swiftest rising stars in the art world is a 26-year-old wunderkind photographer who is equally comfortable shooting heads of state for magazine profiles as he is putting together shows for the gallery context. Of course, we’re talking about Tyler Mitchell, who gained international fame when Beyoncé tapped him to be the first black photographer to shoot a cover for Vogue and has now moved on to having surveys at the International Center of Photography and, beginning last month, a show at the very buzzy Jack Shainman Gallery. Adding to the excitement around that show is the fact that it was curated by none other than Helen Molesworth, one of the most prominent curators in the country who is known in particular for her groundbreaking reinstallation of the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles's collection and her ongoing mission to highlight artists of color. So what’s going on with this gallery show? To find out, Artnet News Art & Design Editor Noor Brara sat down with both Tyler Mitchell and Helen Molesworth to discuss how the show, entitled Feedback, came to be; how they grew to trust each other while working together; and what advice they’d give aspiring youngsters hoping to have careers in the art world one day.

Unless you are living under a particularly out of touch rock, you’ve probably heard of the immersive Van Gogh craze that is currently sweeping the globe. In a sign of our strange times, the nineteenth century Dutch painter best-known for the vibrating intensity of his paintings and the tragic circumstances of his life, including what one Washington Post writer called “the whole ear thing.” He has now become the man of the hour.As we begin to limp our way out of a pandemic, with high-tech glorified light shows dedicated to his legend popping up everywhere from Naples to Paris and New York City, to places like Las Vegas and Kansas City, where you might not naturally expect the post-impressionist to draw a frenzy crowds.So what is going on and what does this all mean? To discuss, Artnet News Chief Art Critic, Ben Davis, is back on the show to demystify things in classic Ben Davis fashion. But before that, there is a very special guest. Possibly, the most special guests to have ever graced the show.

We’ve all seen the movie with the glamorous art dealer, maybe a villain who lives in a cutting edge palatial home, drives an impressive car and speaks with an impressive accent. That pretty much is the image of the art dealer in the popular consciousness, a sophisticated suave, sexy, probably ruthless, strikingly dressed person who is conspicuously rich.  But how well does this image match up with reality? Recently, Artnet News  senior market reporter Eileen Kinsella teamed up with the ace investigative art journalist, Zachary Small to find out just how much art dealers actually do make from their jobs.  And what they found is pretty surprising.

We wanted to make sure you had a chance to check out a very special new podcast miniseries we’ve rolled out. It’s called Shattering the Glass Ceiling, and its dedicated to spotlighting boundary-breaking women in the art world and beyond who have build extraordinary careers around—and inspired by—art. Today, we’ll be re-airing an episode of the series that is of special significance, it’s an interview with the art collector Catherine Levene, whose day job is running the megawatt Meredith media company, publisher of such titles as People Magazine, Travel & Leisure, Entertainment Weekly, and many others. Before that, however, she was the co-founder and CEO of Artspace, the online art marketplace startup. Here, in the following episode, Artnet News’s senior writer Sarah Cascone talks to Catherine about how she started collecting art, her road to Meredith, and why powerful women leaders in the workplace are so very important.

For the past couple of weeks, we’ve been running a little experiment here at the Art Angle—namely our first-ever breakout mini-series, called Shattering the Glass Ceiling, dedicated to remarkable women in the art world who have succeeded in changing the game in their respective arenas. It’s such a good group of interviews, and we want to make sure you have a chance to hear it. We also, it so happens, are taking a little Memorial Day vacation to rest up after the launch of Artnet News Pro, our brand-new members-only offering for participants in the art trade. And so, without further ado, please enjoy this re-air of the first installment of Shattering the Glass ceiling, featuring Artnet News executive editor talking to the powerhouse curator Lauren Haynes, who recently took a prominent post at Duke Museum’s Nasher Museum. Here’s the conversation.