This week Bad at Sports goes full meta, talking about talking about art. We sit down with Ben Davis, National Art Critic for Artnet News and author of 9.5 Theses on Art and Class, to unpack the state of art criticism in 2025. Davis has been one of the sharpest voices charting the relationship between culture, economics, and media—at once insider, outsider, and always keeping his mom in mind.

From the collapse of traditional publishing to the weird vacuum left by social media, Davis doesn’t just describe the cracks in the system—he names them, theorizes them, and points to where something new might emerge. We talk ZIRP (zero-interest-rate phenomena), the rise of click-driven media, what AI means for art, and why communities matter more than markets.

Listen & Follow

Ben Davis on Artnet News - https://news.artnet.com/search/Ben+Davis

 @benstoppable

https://www.benadavis.com/

Name-Drop

• Artnet News — news.artnet.com https://news.artnet.com/search/
• Brooklyn Rail — brooklynrail.org
• AI / ChatGPT — openai.com/chatgpt
• Neil Young — neilyoungarchives.com
• Slayer — slayer.net

 

Image care of... https://c4aa.org/our-research/interviews/ben-davis/