The Art Angle

By artnet News

What's The Art Angle about?

A weekly podcast that brings the biggest stories in the art world down to earth. Go inside the newsroom of the art industry's most-read media outlet, Artnet News, for an in-depth view of what matters most in museums, the market, and much more.

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The Art Angle episodes:

04.18.2024
Why Are Art Resale Prices Plummeting?
The art press is filled with headlines about trophy works trading for huge sums: $195 million for an Andy Warhol, $110 million for a Jean-Michel Basquiat, $91 million for a Jeff Koons. In the popular imagination, pricy art just keeps...
04.11.2024
Why Adriano Pedrosa Sees His Venice Biennale As 'Paying a Debt'
Next week, the art world will descend into the Venetian Lagoon for the Venice Biennale, the most highly anticipated art event of this year. The Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa is at the helm of the prestigious group exhibition, which is...
04.04.2024
Two Critics on the Whitney Biennial
Every two years, the Whitney Museum of American Art returns with its signature and much-anticipated biennial. Founded in 1931, the Whitney Biennial is one of the most historically important art events in the United States, a survey that brings together...
03.28.2024
The Art Angle Roundup: Damien Hirst's Formaldehyde Fail, a Photo Star Rediscovered, and Artnet News Turns 10
Well, it is the end of March, spring has sprung, and April showers are coming in fast and furious. We're back with the monthly Art Angle Round Up, where we focus our attention on three headline-making stories that have made...
03.21.2024
A Peek Behind the Curtain at Auction Houses
A few years back, electrifying bidding wars and monumental transactions routinely had us all on the edge of our seats in the auction room, but this sort of in-room excitement now feels a long way off. Although you wouldn't necessarily...
03.14.2024
A Reporter Goes Undercover in the Art World
The contemporary art world is nothing if not confusing. It is simultaneously deeply frivolous, and takes itself way too seriously. Its business dealings combine total mystification with conspicuous consumption, and the exact mechanisms by which one type of art gets...
03.07.2024
James Fuentes Has His Own Playbook for Success. It’s Working.
It has been 17 years since James Fuentes first hung a shingle out under his own name. In the years since, he has carved out a unique position in the contemporary art world, representing an eclectic mix of older, sometimes...
02.29.2024
The Art Angle Roundup: Museums vs Patrons, a Contested Sculpture Stars in Venice, and Koons on the Moon
On this week's episode, hosts Ben Davis and Kate Brown are joined by the newly-minted Artnet Pro editor and veteran art journalist and critic Andrew Russeth. We're thrilled to have him as a part of our team, and he's making...
02.22.2024
The Roots of the Harlem Renaissance—and Its Power Today
The words the “Harlem Renaissance” have immense magnetism for vast numbers of people. In art history, however, the Harlem Renaissance has often been treated as a footnote to the main story of 20th century art. It’s often been given scant...
02.15.2024
Inside the Art Fraud Feud of the Century
Last month, much of the art industry was transfixed on the goings-on in a courtroom in downtown Manhattan, where the Russian businessman Dimitry Rybolovlev and a group of Sotheby’s auction house representatives were taking turns on the witness stand. The matter...
02.08.2024
The Enduring Obsession With Abstraction
The term “abstraction” gets thrown around a lot in the art world, usually as a vague catchall to describe an otherwise inexpressible style of painting or sculpture. Just going by the dictionary’s definition, “abstract” is described as being disassociated from...
02.01.2024
Unexpected Ways A.I. Might Rewire Art
Artificial intelligence was one of the hottest topics in art in 2023—and we can predict that it will continue to be a major topic in 2024. We can debate whether we should be cautiously optimistic or in an existential panic,...
01.25.2024
The Art Angle Round Up: Market Predictions, Venice Biennale Shake-Ups, and Marina Abramovic's Skincare
We are well into 2024 now, coming to the end of January, and looking back at 2023, one of our favorite innovations was this monthly round up here at the Art Angle. Each month, we bring together Artnet News editors...
01.18.2024
Ishmael Reed on Basquiat Myths and Realities
The author Ishmael Reed is known as a major force in literature and has been called one of the key thinkers of multiculturalism. Born in 1938, Reed arrived with a bang in 1972 with Mumbo Jumbo, a vibrant, hard-to-describe novel...
01.11.2024
The Artist Behind the Art World’s Most Viral Memes
If you like art and are on Instagram, then you probably know the account @freeze_magazine—that's freeze spelled with an E, like "help me, I'm freezing," not with an I, like the popular art magazine and art fair. It's certainly not...
01.04.2024
Lucy Lippard On A Life In And Out Of Art
Any short list of the most important art critics of the last decades would have to include Lucy R. Lippard. She would also be at the very top of Artnet's art critic Ben Davis's personal list of favorite writers about...
12.28.2023
Re-Air: What Is Hypersentamentalism? On the New Tendency in Art
If you follow the mainstream art world, you will know that for the last decade, one of the biggest stories has been a boom in new kinds of figurative painting. A visit to the recent spate of art fairs in...
12.21.2023
The Art Angle Roundup: 2023's Ins And Outs
At the end of the year, it's become something of a tradition for people in all corners of the Internet to review the last 12 months and take a look to the future with a sort of "micro-forecast." The original...
12.14.2023
Artnet's Writers On The Art That Brings Them Joy
"Art is something that makes you breathe with a different kind of happiness." That's a quote from the great Bauhaus textile artist Anni Albers that gets shared a lot, and is especially relevant for this week's episode of the podcast on...
12.07.2023
Klaus Biesenbach on Museums as Social Networks
Most loyal Art Angle followers will be familiar with the curator Klaus Biesenbach. The German-born artist made his mark in Berlin in the 1990s, founding the city's biennale and one of its most-beloved art institutions, Kunst-Werke. He moved West, across...
11.30.2023
The Art Angle Round Up: A Buyer's Art Market, Italy's Tolkein Furor, and the Blackest, Blackest Black
Well, we made it to the end of the year (almost!), and we are back at the Art Angle with our monthly Round Up, where we bring together some of our esteemed reporters to talk about the big stories that...
11.22.2023
How an Exclusive NYC Cult Influenced the Post War Art Scene
"I was like reborn," the art critic Clement Greenberg once remembered, "it was the most important event in my life." The event in question was his encounter with Sullivanian therapy. His biographer, Florence Rubenfeld, once wrote that it would not overstretch...
11.16.2023
How to Look at the Met's Blockbuster Manet/Degas Show
One of the biggest art events of the year is currently up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. That, dare we say, once-in-a-lifetime exhibition is “Manet/Degas.” Through more than 160 works of art, including landmark loans from...
11.09.2023
How Artist Marcel Dzama Brings Surrealism to the Stage
Marcel Dzama has an immediately recognizable style as a visual artist, but his energy has far exceeded the realm of visual art. Born in Winnipeg, Canada in 1974, Dzama got his start with the Royal Art Lodge, a group of...
11.02.2023
Curator Helen Molesworth Looks Back on 30 Years of Art Writing
In 2018, Helen Molesworth was unceremoniously dismissed from her position as chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles. The move proved controversial among industry insiders, many of whom cast it as an example of an institution punishing...
10.31.2023
The Art Angle Presents: What's Going On in the Asian Art Market Right Now
In today's global discourse, “Asia” often takes on an expansive, sometimes oversimplified, identity. Especially within the global art market, this vast continent is frequently painted with broad strokes, overshadowing its rich tapestry of cultures, intricacies, and nuances. Over the past...
10.26.2023
The Art Angle Roundup: London vs Paris, Criticism in the Age of 'Parasocial Aesthetics,' and More Secrets of the Mona Lisa
This week, the Art Angle is returning with this month's edition of the Round Up, featuring Artnet News Europe Editor Kate Brown, National Art Critic Ben Davis, and Global News Editor Naomi Rea. After a whirlwind two weeks of back-to-back art...
10.19.2023
How the World's First Museum Dedicated to Women's Art Is Charting a Path Forward
In December 2020, Congress approved funding for a new Smithsonian Museum dedicated to women's history to be built on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. But our nation's capital has actually been home to a dedicated women's museum, the vaunted...
10.17.2023
The Art Angle Presents: Artist Conrad Shawcross and Simon de Pury on Perceptions of Time
For more than 30 years, the acclaimed British sculptor Conrad Shawcross has been preoccupied with the concept of time. Throughout a career defined by blurring the boundaries between art and science and devising ambitious constructs that ask audiences to contemplate...
10.12.2023
Fotografiska's Bold New Model For Museums
How can art institutions adapt to meet the changing cultural landscape in the coming decades, and what are the new models that will evolve to fill these needs? Fotografiska, a private, for-profit photography museum, is offering a novel possibility. Fotografiska's self proclaimed...
10.05.2023
Hal Foster on the Age of Art Theory
Hal Foster is one of the most well-known thinkers about art today. In a career that spans several decades, he is known for important much-cited books including The Return of the Real from 1996, Design and Crime from 2002 and most recently, Brutal Aesthetics from 2020....
09.28.2023
The Art Angle Round Up: A Glut of Paintings, a Fraudster's Reckoning, and an Art Prank Gone Wrong
The fall art season is now officially in full swing. We've had a big round of fairs already around the world with the Armory Show, Independent 20th Century, Photofairs and more opening simultaneously in New York, and the second edition...
09.21.2023
Artist Carol Bove on Curating Legendary Polymath Harry Smith
Harry Everett Smith is an odd figure to come across in an art museum. That's because he's not known primarily as a visual artist at all. For most, Harry Smith is probably best known as the compiler of the legendary...
09.14.2023
Grow or Go? In an Uncertain Market, Three Art Experts Debate the Future
What does the future of the art market look like? It's a big and thorny question that cannot possibly be answered with a few simple words. From the big picture issues like how artificial intelligence will factor into business decisions and...
09.07.2023
What's Causing the Crisis in Art Criticism?
There are endless ways to write about art, but if you tell someone that's your job, the first thing they're likely going to think is that you write art reviews, though the fact of the matter is that very few...
08.31.2023
The Art Angle Round Up: The British Museum's Crisis, A.I. Art on Trial, and Dealer Beef in Montauk
We're back this week with The Roundup, where we dissect some of the biggest headlines that have been causing a stir over the last weeks in the art world and beyond. This week, Europe editor Kate Brown is joined by...
08.24.2023
Why Digital Art Lives Fast and Dies Young
Today we're going to be talking about a relatively new and novel career within art, one you might not have thought of because it didn't even really exist until recently. And that is... the conservator of new media art. Anyone who...
08.17.2023
Why the Art Market's Struggles Spell Opportunity
So... how is the art market doing these days? If you want to know the answer, you’re in luck, because the latest issue of Artnet’s biannual Intelligence Report just dropped. It’s a special edition, marking the five-year anniversary of the report, which...
08.10.2023
The Pleasures and Paradoxes of Seurat's Iconic 'Sunday Afternoon'
In John Hughes's classic 1986 film Ferris Bueller's Day Off, the cohort of truant teenagers make a visit to the Art Institute of Chicago, and spend some time with the classic painting by George Seurat, titled Sunday Afternoon on the...
08.03.2023
How Surrealist Artist Leonora Carrington Carved Her Space in a Male-Dominated World
Despite being among the most-celebrated surrealists of the last century, British born artist Leonora Carrington is still overlooked as compared to her male counterparts, some of whom were close friends and collaborators. One surrealist was even her husband for a...
07.27.2023
The Art Angle Roundup: Frieze's Expansion, Pollock's NFTs, and Barbenheimer's Impact
It used to be that the art news slowed down in the summer months, but these days, it seems like the art news never takes a break. So we're trying something a little different this week. With so much going on,...
07.20.2023
A Security Guard's Love Letter to the Metropolitan Museum of Art
It’s every art lovers dream. To be alone, after hours, inside one of the world’s most august art museums. Away from the throngs of selfie-stick-wielding tourists and the din of the crowd, it’s just you and the masterpieces. That dream was...
07.13.2023
How Meow Wolf Turned Into an Unlikely Art Juggernaut
The company’s origins are the stuff of legend. A scrappy band of Santa Fe artists with a penchant for building fantastical installations from mounds of trash each write down random words on slips of paper. They draw two from a...
07.06.2023
The Stunning Fall of Lisa Schiff, Art Advisor to the Stars
Just about everyone who works in the New York art world knows Lisa Schiff, an art advisor to the rich and famous who worked with celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio for many years. She was a highly visible presence at art...
06.29.2023
Inside the Controversy Over Hannah Gadsby's 'Pablo-matic' Show
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Pablo Picasso. To mark the occasion, an international event called Picasso Celebration has been organized, with 50 museums throughout the world running 50 different shows looking at the legacy of...
06.22.2023
Why This A.I. Art Pioneer Thinks Text-to-Image Generators Are Killing Creativity
When artificial intelligence first arrived in the art world in 2017, it was received warmly and with open arms. A.I.-generated works by artists like Obvious and Mario Klingemann were fetching hundreds of thousands at auction, art fairs like Scope in...
06.15.2023
Jenny Holzer on the Raw Power of the Well-Wrought Phrase
Over the past five decades, American artist Jenny Holzer has been engaging in thought-provoking interventions into public space that unflinchingly address politics, power, violence, and vulnerability. The New York-based artist investigates language as both content and form, and she works with...
06.08.2023
What Is Hypersentimentalism? On the New Tendency in Art
If you follow the mainstream art world, you will know that for the last decade, one of the biggest stories has been a boom in new kinds of figurative painting. A visit to the recent spate of art fairs in...
06.01.2023
James Murdoch on His Vision for Art Basel and the Future of Culture
In the Covid summer of 2020, the art world was jolted by a very different kind of drama when reports surfaced that MCH Group, the Swiss corporation best known as the parent company of Art Basel, had entered talks to...
05.25.2023
Among the Spiders With Mind-Bending Artist Tomas Saraceno
In the studio of Argentine artist Tomás Saraceno, there’s an expected sound—vibrations of a spider working on its web—a sound normally imperceptible to the human ear, but that doesn’t make it any less real. The recent technological feat of capturing and...

What's The Art Angle about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Art Angle episodes:

Why Are Art Resale Prices Plummeting?

Why Adriano Pedrosa Sees His Venice Biennale As 'Paying a Debt'

Two Critics on the Whitney Biennial

The Art Angle Roundup: Damien Hirst's Formaldehyde Fail, a Photo Star Rediscovered, and Artnet News Turns 10

A Peek Behind the Curtain at Auction Houses

A Reporter Goes Undercover in the Art World

James Fuentes Has His Own Playbook for Success. It’s Working.

The Art Angle Roundup: Museums vs Patrons, a Contested Sculpture Stars in Venice, and Koons on the Moon

The Roots of the Harlem Renaissance—and Its Power Today

Inside the Art Fraud Feud of the Century

The Enduring Obsession With Abstraction

Unexpected Ways A.I. Might Rewire Art

The Art Angle Round Up: Market Predictions, Venice Biennale Shake-Ups, and Marina Abramovic's Skincare

Ishmael Reed on Basquiat Myths and Realities

The Artist Behind the Art World’s Most Viral Memes

Lucy Lippard On A Life In And Out Of Art

Re-Air: What Is Hypersentamentalism? On the New Tendency in Art

The Art Angle Roundup: 2023's Ins And Outs

Artnet's Writers On The Art That Brings Them Joy

Klaus Biesenbach on Museums as Social Networks

The Art Angle Round Up: A Buyer's Art Market, Italy's Tolkein Furor, and the Blackest, Blackest Black

How an Exclusive NYC Cult Influenced the Post War Art Scene

How to Look at the Met's Blockbuster Manet/Degas Show

How Artist Marcel Dzama Brings Surrealism to the Stage

Curator Helen Molesworth Looks Back on 30 Years of Art Writing

The Art Angle Presents: What's Going On in the Asian Art Market Right Now

The Art Angle Roundup: London vs Paris, Criticism in the Age of 'Parasocial Aesthetics,' and More Secrets of the Mona Lisa

How the World's First Museum Dedicated to Women's Art Is Charting a Path Forward

The Art Angle Presents: Artist Conrad Shawcross and Simon de Pury on Perceptions of Time

Fotografiska's Bold New Model For Museums

Hal Foster on the Age of Art Theory

The Art Angle Round Up: A Glut of Paintings, a Fraudster's Reckoning, and an Art Prank Gone Wrong

Artist Carol Bove on Curating Legendary Polymath Harry Smith

Grow or Go? In an Uncertain Market, Three Art Experts Debate the Future

What's Causing the Crisis in Art Criticism?

The Art Angle Round Up: The British Museum's Crisis, A.I. Art on Trial, and Dealer Beef in Montauk

Why Digital Art Lives Fast and Dies Young

Why the Art Market's Struggles Spell Opportunity

The Pleasures and Paradoxes of Seurat's Iconic 'Sunday Afternoon'

How Surrealist Artist Leonora Carrington Carved Her Space in a Male-Dominated World

The Art Angle Roundup: Frieze's Expansion, Pollock's NFTs, and Barbenheimer's Impact

A Security Guard's Love Letter to the Metropolitan Museum of Art

How Meow Wolf Turned Into an Unlikely Art Juggernaut

The Stunning Fall of Lisa Schiff, Art Advisor to the Stars

Inside the Controversy Over Hannah Gadsby's 'Pablo-matic' Show

Why This A.I. Art Pioneer Thinks Text-to-Image Generators Are Killing Creativity

Jenny Holzer on the Raw Power of the Well-Wrought Phrase

What Is Hypersentimentalism? On the New Tendency in Art

James Murdoch on His Vision for Art Basel and the Future of Culture

Among the Spiders With Mind-Bending Artist Tomas Saraceno