u/mirandaandamira

"Perhaps you disagree with my point of view – I can understand that you might be entirely resigned to the notion that capitalism will never be overcome. Maybe you have moved beyond this resignation into a full-blown cynicism. The impression you as artists give is often that everything has already been recuperated, that all radicalism is produced broken, that all resistance is already integrated into the capitalist whole. Your works often make the claim of regretting this, but it is a false claim insofar as it is a process to which they happily contribute. Clearly, few of you are actually interested in a critique of capitalism (but a pseudo-critique that sells will have to do), but for those of us who care about art, for those of us who think that art’s critical capacities have not been exhausted and extinguished, for those of us for whom the abolition of capitalism is not a choice but a necessity, you are the enemy. "

Julien Delagrange is an art historian, contemporary artist, and the founder and director of CAI. Delagrange studied Science of Arts at Ghent University, Belgium, and worked for the Centre for Fine Arts (BOZAR) in Brussels, the Jan Vercruysse Foundation, the Ghent University Library, and has contributed to the international contemporary art scene as an art critic, lecturer, curator, gallery director, consultant, advisor, and as an artist. As an artist, he is represented by Galerie Sabine Bayasli in Paris, France, and Gallery Space60 in Antwerp, Belgium.

The new model of geopolitics might install a curatorial firewall. Already, decency laws within Russia prevent the exhibition of certain canonical American artworks, specifically those that include queer themes or imagery. The value of such works, discursively, aesthetically and financially, cannot be bridged between these spheres. As more artworks reach similar legal and economic blockades, a hemispherical cleavage will emerge in which professional accolades, cultural capital and prices all become distinct and non-transferable.

n this video, I talk about what the "intersection of art and technology" actually means and why this label has suddenly become so present in museums, arts grants, and cultural discourse right now.
Through Heidegger, Groys, Yuk Hai, Steyerl, Malevich, and Bataille, I examine how the museum lost its original archival function to the internet and is being repurposed by tech wealth as a tool for historicizing its own story of progress.

The art market is a famously opaque place, a world of handshake agreements and big-dollar private deals. How does it actually operate, and how has it changed over the centuries? In a richly researched new book titled Trading Beauty: Art Market Histories from the Altar to the Gallery (https://gagosianshop.com/products/val...) , Valentina Castellani provides surprising answers, drawing on a long and storied career in the industry.

She's worked at Sotheby's and Gagosian, where she helped organize landmark exhibitions devoted to Pablo Picasso and Piero Manzoni. Now, she's an adjunct professor at New York University's Steinhardt School, where she teaches a class about the art market. Castellani's book, which is published by Gagosian, reveals how popes, aristocrats, plucky entrepreneurs, and brave true believers developed new ways of commissioning, funding, and selling art, from medieval frescoes to avant-garde conceptual pieces. It's a wild ride, and it spans some 1,500 years.

She joined Andrew Russeth on The Art Angle to delve into her findings. During our conversation, she uncorked stories about maverick dealers and patrons, the undersung role of women in this narrative, and the ways that artists have cannily enticed the market across time. Perhaps most importantly, she makes the case that the art market's relevance extends far beyond money.

Hey all, I am the mod for this subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/InstitutionalCritique/
Institutional Critique basically takes ranting (about the art world) and turns it into an art form. You might find some helpful essays and work that can validate and support your ranting efforts.

xoxo

Have you had the funny feeling that content online is just a worse than it used to be – that actually a lot of art – movies, TV, music, comedy is just not has good as 3, 5, 10 years ago?
Or maybe you are a person who makes art, and you feel like there's just less opportunity to make a living if you aren't someone like Jay-Z or Taylor Swift?
How did this happen? Why is this the case?
To use a word coined by this week's guest Cory Doctorow – 'Enshittification'. That is the title of Cory’s latest book about how our modern lives slowly and, often intentionally, were made less enjoyable and less functional by big tech. Cory is an author, professor, and digital rights activist and generally one of the most articulate speakers on how the de facto tech monopolies are degrading our standard of living. It is not an optimistic conversation, but it is hopeful.

For our cultural predictions roundup back in January, the musician and technologist Trevor McFedries predicted that 2026 was going to be a really good year—professionally speaking -for people with good taste. The jury's still out, but it's definitely turning into a big year for talking about taste. And for the first time in history, the tech world seems to be leading the charge, from engineers penning essays about how "personal taste" is the new moat, to startups promising us more aesthetically discerning Al, to the Palantir chore coat and tech billionaires sitting front row at Fashion Week.

To make sense of why taste has become such a Silicon Valley buzzword—and what that tells us about the changing meaning and role of taste more broadly-we brought on Drew Austin, a writer and urban planner who runs the excellent Substack, Kneeling Bus, where he recently penned a piece called "Tastecore and the Enclosure of the Commons." We discuss Drew's research on the tech world's changing relationship to fashion in the post-pandemic era, the growing epidemic of “tasteslop," and how the current discourse frames taste as something less about personal distinction and more about gaining a competitive edge. Plus, we tap Pierre Bourdieu to try to parse the evolving function of taste in society over time—and what the tech industry's taste obsession can tell us about the shifting landscape of class and class antagonism.

FYI:

The Art Institute just gave their maintenance staff notice that their jobs will be ending in 1 month and they will be replaced by contract staff. The staff members are unionized, so the Art Institute is attempting to avoid paying maintenance and a living wage to its employees.

Nearly a quarter of this staff are elders with over 20 years in. The job market is already rough and being terminated threatens the financial security of themselves and their families.

The union contract prohibits strikes, but not all protest, so they're trying to organize around other forms of solidarity/protest. 

What you can do about it:

-Sign the petition (Google form linked below)

-If you are a donor: Please reach out to the Art Institute and let them know you're not happy with the way they are terminating the longstanding workers who have kept the museum clean, well maintained, and beautiful.

-Follow the union on Instagram (@aic_wu), share their post, and stay tuned for updates on how to support

Pierre d'Alancaisez helped build the cult of contemporary art as a gallerist, a critic, and eventually one of its more useful ideologists but then the pandemic broke the spell. Pierre saw the institutions he had served for what they were: structurally intact yet hollowed of substance, open in theory but ruthlessly exclusive, and committed to diversity in every sense except the diversity of thought. So, he walked away and built something in its place.

Note: there are some audio sync issues in this episode due to connection problems during recording. This version will remain live because the content is worth it, and so is the discussion of it within the comments, however I have commissioned a second edit to fix the sync issues and the new version can be found here:    • The Custodians Of Beauty Became Its Graved...  

This conversation is about what happens when the people charged with guarding a culture become its gravediggers and whether it's possible to build outside institutions that have already collapsed from within.

In this conversation, we think out loud about:

• How a gallery career begun in the Blair-era funding boom became an ideological one without him noticing
• Why artists have become primarily concerned with their own welfare rather than their craft
• The Frankfurt School's long afterlife inside British cultural institutions
• Why COVID broke the spell — and cost him his standing in the art world
• The "post-cultural state" — institutions that are structurally intact but hollowed of substance
• Patronage from the Medici to the modern British collector, and why the American tradition differs
• A direct challenge to the dissident right: why it isn't funding the culture it claims to want
• What's missing from identitarian aesthetics — and what would need to replace it
• Building Verdurin as a counter-institution rather than waiting for reform
• What changed his mind about art, evidence, and belief

Pierre writes for The Critic and runs Verdurin, a London-based salon, publisher, and events series.

>It is this shift toward New Literalism that opens the sector up to comparisons with blatantly superficial venues like Museum of Ice Cream or Refik Anadol’s Dataland. The fact that an amusement like Museum of Ice Cream can label itself “museum” and the public doesn’t think twice about it signals that the sector fumbled this term a long time ago.