The Art Angle

The Art Angle team is taking this week off for Thanksgiving, but we thought we'd share one of our favorite episodes from the past year to see you through this unconventional holiday weekend.  Picture this: a doughy, apple-cheeked infant nestled in between the soft petals of a dew-kissed flower, sound asleep, like the start of a real-life fable. Almost everyone who conjures that mental image will do so using a nearly identical aesthetic—and whether you realize it or not, that’s almost entirely because of the work of legendary baby photographer Anne Geddes. After her debut photography book, Down in the Garden, soared to number three on the New York Times Bestseller list in 1996, Geddes’s wholesomely surreal infant images became inescapable. Oprah went on air to declare Down in the Garden the best coffee-table book she’d ever seen, and by late December 1997, Geddes’s publishing partners had sold more than 1.8 billion (yes, with a “b”) calendars and date books of her photography for the upcoming year. Her dizzying success soon spurred the artist to ramp up production, with a standard Geddes shoot requiring six-to-eight months of planning and a budget between $250,000 and $350,000. But who could blame her for going big? Geddes’s empire of adorable infants seemed unstoppable. Cut to 2020, however, and the picture has changed dramatically—not just for Geddes, but for an entire creative economy driven by analog photography, print publishing, and the high barriers to entry formerly associated with both. Years after smartphones first began putting increasingly high-quality cameras in nearly everyone’s pocket, and Instagram began providing masses of self-trained shutterbugs a free and wide-reaching distribution platform for their images, it’s not hyperbole to say that the pillars on which Geddes built her career have crumbled. So what’s the Queen of Baby Photography to do when her kingdom becomes unrecognizable? Back in May, Andrew Goldstein chatted with Noor Brara, Artnet’s art and design editor, about her recent profile of Geddes. Together, they discussed the artist’s rise, fall, and reckoning with culture’s digital evolution.

The news cycle for the past seven months has been dominated by staggering data points that seek to quantify the scope of the pandemic's effects on the United States and beyond. Within the art world, statistics detailing layoffs and furloughs, museums facing imminent closure, and galleries struggling to make ends meet add to the collective fear and anxiety gripping the world at large. But there have also been bright spots in both the broad economy, and, surprisingly, within the art market itself. A new study commissioned by the Independent art fair and Crozier Fine Arts, carried out by data guru Clare McAndrew lays out one aspect that is not just surviving amid the turmoil—it's actually thriving. For the inaugural NYC Art World Report, an analysis of dozens of private art collectors living in New York shared insights about their buying practices, interests, and disdains within the new, largely virtual art ecosystem. On this week's episode, Elizabeth Dee, veteran gallerist and founder of Independent, joins the podcast to put the report into context, and shares her thoughts on its conclusion: that New York City remains the epicenter for committed art collectors, and will continue to reign supreme across the international landscape. As a coda to Elizabeth's observations, Artnet News's business editor Tim Schneider provides a layman's analysis of the data within the report, and helps make sense of what to do with this new wealth of information.

Well, it finally happened. Former vice president Joe Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, have won the United States presidential election. They ran on the promise of a return to democracy and decency—as well as a repudiation of the past four years under Donald Trump. After all of the hand-wringing, punditry, and poll watching, we're now left to consider what this regime change actually means. For artists and art workers, the jubilation of a Biden win is tempered by a healthy dose of skepticism. Both Biden and Harris have expressed general appreciation for the arts, but it remains to be seen if and how they will act on it. The inhabitants of the art world's historically liberal bubble are also facing the reality that they, like the pollsters and so many others, were entirely wrong about the margin of victory and the extent to which they live in a deeply divided country. On this week's episode, Artnet News contributor Brian Boucher, market reporter Eileen Kinsella, and chief art critic Ben Davis join the podcast to discuss the seismic changes afoot—and what it could mean for the future of culture.  

When San Francisco-based artist Matt Furie created a zine in 2005 featuring a rag-tag group of immature adolescent animals, including a heavy-lidded frog named Pepe, he had no idea that his humble drawing would become a flashpoint for roiling cultural and political tensions across the world.   A new documentary titled Feels Good Man, directed by Arthur Jones and produced by Giorgio Angelini, charts the story of Matt Furie and his creation. On this week's episode of the Art Angle, Jones and Angelini speak with Artnet News's chief critic Ben Davis about cultural appropriation, freedom of speech, and the power of images in the digital landscape. The story of Pepe is a story of Internet culture at its best and worst—from being transformed into an innocent meme to its designation as a hate symbol is both a cautionary tale and a triumph.

One of the most salient images of America's tattered democracy is Ed Ruscha's Our Flag, a startling painting of Old Glory, shredded and flapping against a dark sky.

Frida Kahlo is, by every metric, one of the most famous artists in the world. Recently the priciest Latinx painter at auction, she has also been the subject of solo shows at prestigious institutions around the world, and she continues to be a pop-culture sensation whose image and iconography grace everything from apparel, to dolls, to smartphone selfie filters (and much more). Though Kahlo died in 1954 at the young age of 47, her life continues to inspire people around the globe today. One person particularly enamored with her story is Arianna Davis, a journalist and digital director of O, the Oprah Winfrey Magazine. Davis recently published her first book, What Would Frida Do?: A Guide to Living Boldly, which channels Kahlo's legacy through a self-help lens to guide readers toward unapologetic pursuit of their desires. On this week's episode, Davis joins the podcast to discuss her book, its lessons, and the artist at the foundation of both.

Through October 24, Galerie Lelong in New York is presenting "Gate to the Blue," a striking show of paintings by the late artist Ficre Ghebreyesus that opens a portal to his hugely complex, visually stunning, and tragically short life. At age 16, Ghebreyesus fled his native Eritrea during the nation's turbulent war for independence and traveled extensively through Europe before settling in the United States. There, he worked as a chef while quietly creating extraordinary artworks that he rarely exhibited and refused to sell. Ghebreyesus and his brothers eventually founded the celebrated New Haven restaurant Caffe Adulis, where he met the distinguished poet, playwright, and essayist Elizabeth Alexander in 1996. Within weeks, the two decided to marry, embarking on an incredible shared life of creativity, culture, and family. But the dream ended too soon. In 2012, Ghebreyesus died of sudden heart failure just days after his 50th birthday. His tragic passing forced Alexander to reinvent herself in a crucible of grief while caring for their two young sons—a challenge she movingly chronicled in her Pulitzer Prize-nominated 2015 memoir, The Light of the World. After this crossroads, Alexander and her children moved to New York City, where she pivoted her career from academia to cultural philanthropy with a special focus on social justice. She went on to be named the director of creativity and free expression at the $13.7 billion Ford Foundation in 2016, and since 2018 has served as president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Remarkably, Alexander has also done all of this while stewarding Ghebreyesus's artistic estate: roughly 700 paintings and countless other works that are finally being shared with the world at large so that his memory and insights can live on. On this week's episode of the Art Angle, Elizabeth Alexander joins Andrew Goldstein to discuss her late husband's art, the creative synergy of their life together, and how it has informed her mission to use philanthropy to bring about a more just world.

For many emerging artists, social media platforms have become an indispensable platform for jumpstarting their careers. But years after Instagram sparked its first zeitgeist-shaping visual trends, a different set of creatives has begun finding their rhythm outside the bounds of traditional institutions thanks to a newer app: TikTok. Owned by a Chinese company called ByteDance and powered by an uncannily perceptive content-discovery algorithm, the video-sharing platform now counts nearly a billion active users around the globe and seems to be transforming a growing list of teens and twenty-somethings into millionaire influencers. For contemporary artists like Colette Bernard and Kelsy Landin, TikTok has also proven to be the most effective app yet for building a sizable audience of loyal—and often paying—fans. Now, though, with the Trump administration threatening bans of TikTok and WeChat in the US over security concerns, Bernard, Landin, and countless other artists are facing the prospect of losing their newfound livelihoods only months after finding a true creative home on the platform. On this week's episode of the Art Angle, journalist Zachary Small joins the show to discuss what has made TikTok such a revelation to artists across a variety of age groups, which kinds of artworks are attracting the most attention there, and how a TikTok ban would only worsen the devastating "brain drain" vacuuming young, diverse talent away from the increasingly troubled art industry.

To call the mood of this past spring in the New York art world "apocalyptic" would hardly be an exaggeration. Although it was on March 22 that the rapid spread of COVID-19 pushed governor Andrew Cuomo to order the closure of all non-essential businesses in New York state, the renowned museums and galleries that make New York City the beating heart of the US art world had already started voluntarily shutting down almost two weeks earlier out of concern for public safety. As spring unfolded, furloughs and layoffs devastated the for-profit and nonprofit sides of the arts workforce alike; dealers started frantically pivoting to online viewing rooms to try to coax sales from collectors forbidden by law to enter their bricks-and-mortar galleries; and a major survey estimated that up to one-third of American museums might never re-emerge from the lockdown. Yet by late June in New York, the pandemic had receded far enough that galleries were permitted to begin reopening their long-closed doors to the public if they felt ready. Governor Cuomo then signaled that the state's museums could resume operating in late August. By Labor Day weekend, a steady stream of art-starved visitors had completed the careful reanimation of the New York art world—an outcome that seemed almost unthinkable six months earlier. So, how exactly did NYC's museums and galleries contend with a half-year of lockdown? What have they changed to accommodate the realities of the new normal? And what is the forecast for the future? On this week's episode, Artnet News's Eileen Kinsella and Tim Schneider join Andrew Goldstein to offer their insights.

It used to be that even the biggest, brawniest Hollywood talent agencies restricted their clientele to... well, Hollywood. That meant actors, filmmakers, screenwriters, and not much else. But Tinseltown's 10-percentaries have been playing by a new set of rules for years now. Nowhere is this truer than at United Talent Agency (UTA), one of the entertainment industry's "big three" representation houses, where the daily schedule of client meetings has expanded to include pop stars and hip-hop legends, professional athletes and prominent anchormen, and yes, even major contemporary artists including Ai Weiwei, Rashid Johnson, and Shirin Neshat. In 2015, the late Josh Roth founded UTA's Fine Arts division to help visual artists of all stripes extend their reach into feature filmmaking, collaborations with fashion designers, and other unorthodox opportunities beyond the gallery walls. The range of possibilities widened further when the agency later opened UTA Artist Space, a permanent exhibition venue where it would work in partnership with artists' existing dealers to present groundbreaking physical shows. The year after Roth's untimely passing, UTA Fine Arts found its next leader in Arthur Lewis, a tastemaker and avid collector (particularly of works by women of color) who had built a distinguished career in the retail industry. In the just-published Fall 2020 issue of the Artnet Intelligence Report, the inaugural New Innovators list featured Lewis as one of 51 individuals blazing a trail to the art world of the future. On this week's episode, Lewis joins the podcast to discuss his unexpected path to his "dream" job, how artists are taking greater control of their destinies, and why contemporary art is suddenly the space everyone wants to be a part of.