The Art Angle

Most of us can agree: we are living through a cultural crisis. It doesn’t come from a single source—it isn’t just algorithms, aesthetics, politics, or the economy. It’s the convergence of all these forces, and beneath them, the erosion of institutions that once anchored collective life. Over the past decade, digital platforms, like social media, promised to be a new kind of connective tissue—a democratizing force to replace more slow-moving institutions. But while platforms have transformed our economies and society, they’ve also hollowed out the very structures that once gave us shared ground.

Mike Pepi has long been a sharp voice in this particular debate. Straddling both the tech industry and the worlds of art criticism and cultural theory, he brings a rare perspective. His writing, which has appeared in Frieze, e-flux, Artforum, and The Brooklyn Rail, also takes the form of a compelling new book called Against Platforms: Surviving Digital Utopia that was published earlier this year. In it, Pepi dismantles some of Silicon Valley’s most enduring myths, and it’s a bracing argument about what we have lost and what’s at stake as we hand over so much power, diminishing along the way some of our core institutions. But he also looks at how we might begin to rebuild them. For the art world in particular, the implications of Pepi's ideas are profound.

 This is a re-air of a popular episode from earlier in the year.

Have you ever asked yourself: What do artists have to learn from the octopus? Maybe not—but the question is at the heart of the work of Miriam Simun, who currently has an exhibition about her Institute for Transhumanist Cephalopod Evolution at the art space Recess in Brooklyn. And it turns out the answer is mind-expanding. Almost literally.

Simun’s unusual art practice can be seen as part of a serious trend in recent years of artists exploring non-human thought of all kinds in the hopes of shifting our troubled relationship to the natural world. The centerpiece of Simun's show at Recess is a series of workshops titled “How to Become an Octopus (and sometime squid).” For these, the artist guides participants through a two-hour program of “psycho-physical” exercises she has developed over many years through collaborations with marine biologists, engineers, dancers, and synchronized swimmers.

She’s taught the method all over the world, and the description says the classes are “open to anyone curious about cephalopods, new ways of sensing, and expanding the definition of self”—an audience which included national art critic Ben Davis. He got in there to explore my cephalopod side, and for this week's Art Angle, we talk about Simun’s art and what he took away from my experience in her workshop.

If you want to know which artist is having the biggest year in museums, there is one name that springs to mind for me: Cara Romero.

Since her first big breakout a decade ago at Santa Fe Indian Market, Romero has been steadily growing in influence. If you don’t know it yet, her photo-based art is full of color, drama, and detail. It’s sometimes funny, sometimes fantastical. And it moves between a variety of themes that are extremely important in museums right now: Indigenous identities, environmental concern, science fiction, and staged or set-up photography, to name a few.

For that reason, Romero finds her work part of many surveys and touring exhibitions at the moment. She had this year a mid-career retrospective at the Hood Museum at Dartmouth, “Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai,” meaning “Living Light.” She also has a two-person spotlight with her husband, the artist Diego Romero, called “Tales of Future Past,” currently at the Crocker art Museum in Sacramento.

For someone who has risen to the very top of the museum circuit, Romero has had a unique career path and story.

Join The Art Angle hosts Ben Davis and Kate Brown for a special live edition of The Round-Up with special guest Matthew Higgs at Independent 20th Century Art Fair on Saturday, September 6, at 5 p.m. in New York. Purchase your tickets at Independenthq.com, and learn more about Independent 20th Century’s full programming here.

In art history, the pastoral has long offered a vision of nature as sanctuary—Arcadian meadows, idyllic countrysides, and timeless landscapes painted as if untouched by human conflict or change. It is a mode steeped in longing, often idealizing rural life as a place of harmony, simplicity, and beauty. From the verdant backdrops of Renaissance allegories to the sunlit fields of 19th-century landscape painting, the pastoral tradition has provided generations of artists and their audiences a gentle escape from the turbulence of urban and political life. You can still see these scenes in their full, romantic bloom at institutions like the Met in New York or the Louvre in Paris, where they stand as visions of a perfect, almost mythical world.

Today, however, a different strain of pastoral is taking root—one that resists the urge to smooth over complexity. My sharp-eyed colleague Katie White has spotted a cohort of contemporary artists who are engaging with pastoral imagery in ways that raise the stakes, bringing the countryside into conversation with the crises and contradictions of the present. She’s dubbed this approach the para-pastoral, a genre that does not retreat into a calm and untroubled countryside but instead ventures into ambiguous, layered, and sometimes unsettling terrains.

According to Katie, this new approach reframes the landscape not as a static refuge but as a charged space, marked by ecological urgency, political tension, and social change. Rather than romanticizing, the para-pastoral interrogates: Who has access to land? What histories does it conceal? How do rural spaces fit into the global story of climate and capitalism?

Katie joins senior editor Kate Brown on the podcast to trace the history of pastoral art and explore the tense, resonant present of the para-pastoral. Together, we’ll look at what’s fueling the genre’s resurgence, the social and environmental urgencies shaping it, and how artists are reimagining the natural landscape—not as a refuge from reality, but as a mirror of it.

Episode artwork: Samantha Joy Groff, Backwoods Diana the Huntress (2024). Photograph: Sofia Colvin. Courtesy of the artist. 

While we are on summer break, this is a re-air of a popular episode from earlier in the year.

Can you think of a work of art that truly thrilled you? Maybe you can—and if you can, maybe it even literally made you shiver, or sent a chill up your spine.

This is the phenomena that is called “Aesthetic Chills.” It’s tied to strong emotional reactions to music or dramatic moments in fiction, or even to works of visual art. The effect is a bit mysterious, though it’s also associated with some of our most memorable art encounters. What does it mean for an artwork to be literally “spine-tingling?” Why does it happen when it happens, and why is it so rare? Ben Davis wrote a two-art essay last year on this fascinating phenomena.

Ben’s essay argued that this was more than just a technical subject. He thought that it might even point towards some vital parts of what make art important in our lives that don’t get enough attention. Based on the reaction of readers, many seem to agree—we also published an essay of readers responding with their own examples of artworks that had the effect on them.

It may be the dog days of summer, but the art world doesn’t take a break, and there’s plenty to talk about for our monthly roundup episode, where we parse and analyze the biggest headlines shaping the art world and industry. In this episode, we take a look at what is going on in the art scenes across London, New York, and Berlin, including some of the biennials going on this summer. Then, we get into the headlines: including a dive into a long-gestating biopic by actor Johnny Depp, called Modì: Three Days on the Wing of Madness. The new film is Depp's first directorial effort in nearly three decades, and it dramatizes 72 chaotic hours in the artist Amedeo Modigliani’s life as he chases around early 20th-century Paris with artists Chaim Soutine and Maurice Utrillo. We also talk about Depp's new art drop. Is it all a rebranding exercise?

After that, we break down the intrigue swirling around the U.S. pavilion for next year’s Venice Biennale and what it might reveal about American cultural diplomacy in 2025. Within that fold, we take stock of a proposal from controversy-loving artist Andres Serrano and another idea from far-right American blogger Curtis Yarvin. Last but not least, we analyze the Labubu mania, a craze for these mischievous little dolls that has finally made its way into the art world and into the market.

National art critic Ben Davis and our editor-in-chief, Naomi Rea joined senior editor Kate Brown on the podcast to talk about it all.

If you’ve been around art in the last several decades or so, you likely have heard the term “institutional critique.” This is a genre of art that turns the lens back  onto the world around the art object as its subject, finding playful or polemical ways to provoke thought on art’s unspoken rules and expectations and links to the wider world.

Andrea Fraser is one of the artists who has most helped define “institutional critique” as a genre and as a practice. She has done this in artworks that sometimes look like performances, or lectures, or works of research—but also in her essays and theoretical writings.

One of her recent essays, “The Field of Contemporary Art: A Diagram,” published over at e-Flux Notes, is an attempt literally to map out how contemporary art is not one thing but a landscape of different competing camps and value systems, so that you might figure out where you stand within it. She calls this theory “a resource to make sense of a field that makes no sense,” and she agreed to talk to art critic Ben Davis about it.

What’s a painting worth? For art world professionals, that question of price has never been easy—but lately, it’s gotten harder than ever.

As we’ve discussed on this podcast before, the art market has cooled off. But this isn’t just a downturn—it’s a disruption. The system that once supported pricing logic is now in disarray, and dealers and advisors are feeling the strain.

In a recent report for Artnet News Pro, our editor-in-chief Naomi Rea explored how the traditional rules of art pricing have stopped making sense. With confidence waning and speculation drying up, dealers are quietly recalibrating. What we’re seeing may be more than a correction—as Naomi reports, it could be the unraveling of an entire logic.

Naomi joins senior editor Kate Brown to unpack what’s going on in the “danger zone” of the market and how different players—from mega-galleries, emerging dealers, to advisors and collectors—are adapting. They also discuss whether we might be heading toward a more sustainable and meaningful art market.

Every rising generation reinvents the rules of how art works. What are the new new ways of working? What kinds of spaces serve those needs? Art critic Ben Davis keeps coming back to these questions, and it’s part of why he decided he wanted to talk to Maya Man.

Man got her MFA from the famous Media Art program at the University of California in 2023. She makes art that’s fun and very online, looking at the digital world and the way it blurs reality and performance. Right now, her work A Realistic Day in My Life Living in New York City is the first-ever work commissioned by the Whitney Museum for its “On the Hour” program, taking over the museum’s website every hour for 30 seconds. Set your clock if you want to catch it.

Man is also a scene-maker herself. Davis first heard about her experimental art space, Heart, after it had already closed, earlier this year. But in its brief, frenzied life, it left a big mark. It was a space where a certain kind of experimental online/offline art scene that feels very now started to define itself.

When we first aired this episode about red chip art a few months back, it captured a cultural and art market phenomenon hiding in plain sight. My colleague Annie Armstrong mapped out a world of Cybertrucks, crypto wallets, and Alec Monopoly openings—a bro-filled art scene where KAWS, MSCHF, and Daniel Arsham are the mainstays, and where spectacle often outpaces substance.

Then Adrien Brody had an art show.

This summer, at Eden Gallery in New York, the Oscar-winning actor unveiled his solo exhibition "Made in America," including a body of work that dives headfirst into the visual language of red-chip art. The show includes mixed-media paintings with portraits of Marilyn Monroe, and there are also Basquiat-inspired crowns, rats, and images of Mickey Mouse. There’s even a participatory element that involves audience members sticking their used chewing gum on the gallery wall. Brody's maximalist, pop-culture salad seems tailor-made for virality, sure—but reactions in the art world have been quite mixed.

Some see Brody’s exhibition as a genuine creative endeavor; but others view it as a high-profile example of what happens when celebrity, commerce, and art collide in an already hype-driven market. Some don't mind the celebrity aspect but think it is just bad painting. Either way, what’s certain is that Brody isn’t just dabbling in this so-called red chip art world sphere—he’s fully committed and he is now the new face of it— in all of its chrome-coated, algorithm-charmed aesthetic.

In honor of the buzz surrounding "Made in America," we’re re-airing our episode on red chip art. In it, I spoke to Annie about the phenomenon, exploring how social media, speculation, and celebrity culture are reshaping a corner of the art world that often defies traditional critical frameworks. Whether you see it as democratizing or dystopian, red chip art is impossible to ignore.