The Art Angle

In 2017 Canadian software developers, Matt Hall, and John Watkinson debuted what would become a landmark project in the early crypto art movement, the CryptoPunks. Released through their company Larva Labs, the CryptoPunks consisted of 10,000 unique collectible characters whose chain of title would be tracked on the Ethereum blockchain. Each punk is a 24 by 24 pixel avatar whose individual traits were generated algorithmically. From Mohawks to shaved heads, from eye patches to colored eyeshadow and even from human men and women to apes, zombies, and aliens, every punk is one of a kind, but all would look perfectly at home intimidating a businessman in a classic eight bit Nintendo game. Although Hall and Watkinson kept a thousand CryptoPunks for themselves, the duo released the other 9,000 punks for free to any Ethereum users willing to pay the gas fees to claim them back in 2017. But the punks value on the secondary market and their presence in popular culture have exploded in the years since.

In June 2021, a single alien punk sold at Sotheby's for $11.75 million. Two months later, Visa paid $150,000 to acquire a CryptoPunk for its corporate collection and at this September's Met gala Reddit, co-founder Alexis Ohanian wore a badge depicting a CryptoPunk he bought for his wife, tennis superstar, Serena Williams, because he thought it resembled her. But the crypto punks have also brought together a tight knit global community who see the project and the wider crypto art space as so much more than driver of record sales and red carpet moments. As part of art Artnet’s effort to bridge the gap between the crypto community and the world of fine art, Artnet’s Director of NFTs, Jiayin Chen, recently held a round table discussion with three early collectors of Crypto Punks, also known within the community simply as OGs. 

They are B, one of the only known women among the original crypto punk claimants, Claire Silver, who is now a renowned crypto artist in her own rights and Mr. 703, who originally claimed well over 700 crypto punks and currently ranks as the fifth largest collector of the series worldwide. Jiayin connected with the trio over zoom a few days before the third annual NFT NYC conference kicked off in Time Square. 

This week we aren't so much going down to earth as we are climbing up into the art market stratosphere, where only the wealthiest collectors reside. All eyes are on this tip top of the market as the art world prepares for what may be the biggest auction of the decade, Sotheby's sale of the Macklowe collection.

This star studded group of works was assembled over 50 years by the billionaire couple Harry and Linda Macklowe, but those were happier times. Over the past five years, their divorce has grown so acrimonious that a judge ordered 64 of their most prized paintings and sculptures to be sold at auction because they couldn't agree on how else to split the assets.

The collection of work by Alberto Giacometti, Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly and many more are some of the most high quality blue chip artworks to hit the auction block in. They're expected to fetch more than $600 million at Sotheby's over the next six months, beginning with an evening sale on November 15th. To find out more about how this collection came to auction and what it reveals about the state of the art market Artnet News Executive Editor Julie Halperin spoke with Artnet News resident Art Detective and Senior Reporter Katya Kazakina.

If you consider yourself a dedicated fan of contemporary art, then you're probably no stranger to watching things onscreen that the average person would find bizarre, upsetting, or even downright gruesome. So it should come as no surprise that the art world––and the Artnet News staff––contains more than a couple die-hard fans of horror movies, too.

But what's more surprising than the contemporary art world having an interest in Hollywood horror flicks is that Hollywood horror flicks increasingly seem to have an interest in the contemporary art world. 

Over the past few years, big-name studios and production companies have released multiple hair-raising feature films with––you guessed it––an art angle. And while each one of these movies has sunk its claws into different aspects of contemporary art, the fact that screenwriters and directors keep coming back to it for spooky material suggests that something larger is afoot in the broader culture's perception of the strange little cult we call the art world.

In honor of Halloween, my Artnet News colleague and fellow horror aficionado Taylor Dafoe wrote a piece that offered up some ideas about why, exactly, contemporary art has haunted so many recent scary movies. Through the cursed app known as Zoom, Taylor joined Artnet News Art Business Editor,Tim Schneider, to talk about three recent films featured in that piece: Candyman, Velvet Buzzsaw, and Hereditary. 

A couple haunted housekeeping items before we begin: If you haven't seen those movies but want to, be advised that there are spoilers scattered throughout the episode. And if you have some feedback or maybe a recommendation for a future episode, go ahead and email us at [email protected]. That's p-o-d-c-a-s-t-s @ artnet dot com.

OK, with all that out of the way: Lock your doors, turn out the lights, and follow Tim and Taylor into the dark... if you dare.

If you are familiar with the artist Judy Chicago, chances are you associate her with one piece: her magnum opus The Dinner Party, an epic work of installation art featuring elaborate place settings for 39 famous women, both mythical and historical, at a triangular banquet table. The feminist masterpiece took nearly six years and a veritable army of some 400 volunteers to complete. It became an international sensation, attracting 16 million visitors on a 10-year tour of the globe, largely organized by Chicago and her team, in the absence of institutional support from the art world. But the artwork, now on permanent view at the Brooklyn Museum's Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, is conspicuously absent from the 82-year-old's first-ever retrospective, which opened in August, after over a year's delay due to the pandemic, at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. 

The show is something of a homecoming for Chicago, who debuted The Dinner Party in the city at SFMOMA in 1979—but she's pleased that the exhibition, which does include preparatory Dinner Party works, is finally putting the spotlight on the rest of her career. "Judy Chicago: A Retrospective" curated by Claudia Schmuckli, presents some 130 artworks that seemingly encompass every medium, from paintings and drawings to tapestries and ceramics, and even photographs of her ephemeral "Women and Smoke" firework performance art series. 

Amid a busy fall that has seen Chicago repeatedly crisscross the country, traveling to both coasts from her home in the tiny town of Belen, New Mexico, Artnet News Senior Writer Sarah Cascone, was lucky enough to pin her down during a visit to New York for a rare pandemic-era in-person interview. 

This week, we're hopping into a time machine and traveling to the not so distant future to answer this question, how will the technological tools being developed today shape the art world of tomorrow. It's a question we delve into in the fall 2021 edition of the Artnet Intelligence Report, which is out now. 

The theme of the issue is the roaring 2020s and inside we introduce you to the collectors who are looking to shift the axes of power in the art world, the galleries that will serve as social hubs once we get back out and about, and as we'll discuss today, the tech that will transform the business. To get the lowdown on what tools will define the next decade of the trade we spoke with Artnet News, Art Business Editor, Tim Schneider, who wrote a feature on the subject for the report. 

If you like, what you hear and want to read the full report, go to news.artnet.com/markets/the intelligence report. It's available exclusively to Arden news pro members. So if you aren't already a member, you can [email protected] slash.

It’s hard to describe the experience of a work by Ryoji Ikeda. The Japanese artist has worked as an experimental musician, performer, researcher, and art-maker, and he brings it all together for immense, immersive installations that fill the senses. But while the word “immersive” has come to connote Instagram bait, Ikeda’s works are anything but lowbrow. The experience of a Ryoji Ikeda work is both brainy and very visceral, intellectual and awe-inspiring.

With a background in experimental sound, Ikeda puts you in touch with sonic experiences that your body probably hasn’t had to process before. With an interest in science and mathematics, his visuals often draw on huge data sets, giving you vast walls of data flickering at you faster than you can process, as if tracing the sense of a collective intelligence trying to sync up with the universe. Reviewing a show of his work in New York some years ago, Artnet News Senior Art Critic, Ben Davis once called it a kind of “cosmic minimalism.” 

This fall has been a big one for Ikeda. In Switzerland during Art Basel, he staged for his gallery, Almine Rech, “data-verse 3,” the closing chapter of a project commissioned 6 years ago by Audemars Piguet Contemporary, the art program of Ikeda’s long-time watchmaking patrons. The product of decades of research on sound and image, it animates data from CERN, NASA and the Human Genome Project. In London, the “data-verse” trilogy was shown together for the first time as the centerpiece of the largest-ever exhibition of his installations at 180 Studio, which drew crowds.

Artnet News European Market Editor Naomi Rea, got a chance to experience both the London and Basel shows and a live performance given by Ikeda in London. Ikeda doesn’t do many interviews, but at Art Basel last month, she got a chance to sit down with the artist about his thoughts on what he does. 

An art industry ritual returned after an unprecedented hiatus: on a Monday evening last week, art

advisors, dealers, and collectors ceremoniously filed into the formidable fairgrounds of Switzerland’s Art

Basel. The premier art fair’s 50th edition was set to take place across a balmy week in June 2020, but it

slid back nearly a year and half, its plans marred by a raging public health crisis, limitations on travel, and

restrictions on events and gatherings. After so much uncertainty about the state of the art market, more

than 270 dealers calculated their risks and ultimately took a leap of faith and brought the best of their

rosters to the Rhine. It seems the gambit really paid off—by the late afternoon on preview day, gallerists

seemed to really exhale for the first time in months or even a year.

Was it business as usual? Yes and no. The event ran with incredible smoothness, with no issues save for a

few spats on Twitter over whether the absence of US collectors was a boon for European deal-making or

not. Restaurants were booked out across town for lavish dinners, but being on the guest list wasnt the only

prerequisite—proof of vaccination as required. Sales were strong, but not quite like the old days. And

NFTs made a flashy debut.

On the whole, everyone seemed deeply relieved to be back in their booths or perusing the aisles. Artnet News's Europe Editor Kate Brown was joined in Basel by European Market Editor, Naomi Rea and Senior Market Editor, Eileen Kinsella to take the temperature of the scene.

For the 100th episode of the Art Angle, Artnet News’s Style Editor, Noor Brara had the pleasure of speaking with critically acclaimed author, professor, and social commentator Roxane Gay, whose writings on feminism, politics, intersectionality, and culture have made her one of the keenest and most important observers of our time. Gay is also an avid art collector and appreciator who, along with her wife Debbie Millman, has in the last few years years amassed an impressive personal collection and has been outspoken about the not-always-nice nature of the New York gallery scene. She discusses her forthcoming essay for Artnet News: a piece that explores, in great detail, a new painting by the Los Angeles-based figurative painter, Calida Rawles, which recently debuted as part of her new show at Lehmann Maupin gallery. 

In the last few years, Rawles has garnered significant attention for her sensitive, photorealistic depictions of Black women and girls swimming and floating in pools—images that seek to posit water as an allegorical space for healing while also touching on its traumatic historical significance to the Black American community, many of whose ancestors died in the Middle Passage and who, for a long time because of segregationist Jim Crow-era laws, were barred from entering and swimming in certain bodies of water. The artwork that Gay is writing about—entitled High Tide, Heavy Armor—was created earlier this year, and depicts a Black man who bears a strong resemblance to Kurt Reinhold, a man and friend of the artist’s who was shot for jaywalking in San Clemente this past February. In the painting, the figure is shown from above and positioned low on the canvas, his eyes downcast as a body of water full of movement and tumult surrounds him, consuming the rest of the canvas. According to Rawles, the water offers a kind of topographical mapping of the killings of Black Americans, outlining several states where the numbers were highest. It is a poignant and arresting image, encompassing Rawles’s thoughts and feelings about the last few years. And in many ways, it marks a departure from her previous work. Gay discusses Rawles’s piece and why she connected so viscerally to her work.

Artists Peter Halley and Keltie Ferris first met sometime in the mid-2000s, at the height of the abstract painting revival. Halley, a pioneering Neo-Conceptualist renowned for his disciplined grids, was head of painting and printmaking at the Yale School of Art; Ferris, a graduate student with a knack for wielding fluid materials like spray paint. 

Nevertheless, their work had a lot in common: a love of color, especially jangly fluorescents; an embrace of digital influences; and a desire to release painting from both its figurative and abstract forebears.

Through the course of the teaching relationship, each found a respect for the other’s practice, and the conversation has continued—even if the two artists don’t actually talk as much as they once did. To pit their paintings against each other today is like seeing estranged cousins reunite: time has changed them, but you can’t deny the shared DNA.

As New York’s first IRL art fair kicked off last week with the Armory Show, both Halley and Ferris presented new works at Independent Art Fair, known in certain circles as the “thinking person’s fair,” which debuted at the Battery Maritime Building in downtown Manhattan. Ahead of the fair, the teacher and his former student reunited to catch up and exchange ideas. Artnet News’s Taylor Dafoe tagged along (virtually) to record the results.

What followed was a rare glimpse at two artists talking shop, in a freewheeling discursive conversation about about color, working methods, and what it means to make non-figurative painting in a time when figuration reigns supreme.

Some of the most impactful stories to surface this past year have revolved around three major issues affecting the world as a whole: there’s a worsening climate emergency, a global health crisis and—in the fold—a breakneck acceleration of technology that’s increasingly entangling itself into every aspect of our lives.

When it comes to the art world, we can probably agree it's time to ask some hard questions. Should there be so many art events? How should we gather? Do we need to experience art in person to understand it?

During lockdowns around the world over the last 18 months, we’ve been learning just how fluidly art can transition into the digital realm—and how clumsy a failed attempt can be.

Among the art events that managed to pull off successful ventures this year is the first edition of the Helsinki Biennial, which took on these questions. Taking place on an island off the coast of the capital of Finland, the exhibition, called “The Same Sea,” meets our collective moment, exploring concerns around our interconnectedness, nature, and sustainability. And it’s not just in theme: the Helsinki Biennial is calculating and trimming its climate footprint every step of the way with a goal of becoming the first carbon neutral biennial by 2035.

In the middle of a pandemic and rising temperatures, 41 artists are presenting works that carefully consider the surroundings of Vallisaari Island and an array of plants and creatures that populate it. To reach a wider audience when travel is both restricted and carbon-intensive, the biennale, which is on view until September 26, has partnered with Facebook Open Arts to explore how technology might help connect audiences with artworks peppered on the island.

This week, we're thrilled to welcome Maija Tanninen, director of the forward-thinking Helsinki Biennial and the Helsinki Art Museum, and Tina Vaz, Head of Facebook Open Arts, to discuss the Helsinki Biennial’s unique approaches to greening a biennial, and how technology can be used to bring us closer to nature in meaningful ways.

If you enjoy this conversation, please join our panel conversation, “Helsinki Biennial and Facebook Open Arts – Future Visions / Art & Tech”—which will be available to watch on our Facebook page on September 22.