The Art Angle - A Damning Appraisal of Art World Elitism

A Damning Appraisal of Art World Elitism

10/17/24 • 44 min

1 Listener

Few creative works ever managed to get the weird pathologies and unique characters of the art world quite right. But journalist and author Hari Kunzru's newest novel Blue Ruin is definitely one of those works. Set in the early stages of the pandemic, Kunzru's novel looks at how wealth and privilege function and fester in the art world.

It's an astonishing and incisive exploration of the power dynamics and value creation in art by an author who has been keenly observing the art world's odd rituals for decades. Blue Ruin moves between lockdown in upstate New York where some art professionals are hiding out on a very nice property, and then moves back in time to the optimistic art scene of the 1990s in London. Between these places, we follow Jay, a British artist who makes a grand gesture of quitting art in his twenties, only to find himself ramped back into the art world and the people who haunted it, all of which he had tried to leave behind.

Originally from Britain and based in New York. Kunzru is the author of seven novels, including White Tears and Red Pill. Blue Ruin is the third of this trilogy. He's also a regular contributor to the New York Review of books in the New York Times and writes a column for Harpers. Kunzru also teaches in the creative writing program at New York University and is the host of the podcast Into the Zone.

Previous Episode

The Brooklyn Museum Is Turning 200. What’s Next?

Over the past 200 years, a museum in New York has quietly grown to become one of the city's most esteemed cultural institutions. You might think I'm talking about the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the MoMA, but no, it's the Brooklyn Museum.

Founded in 1823 as a community library which later merged with the Brooklyn Institute, the Brooklyn Museum is now firmly fixed on the city's cultural landscape. Its James Polshek-designed glass facade is immediately recognizable. It comes backed by a collection spanning historical artifacts and contemporary art, and it remains dedicated to reflecting the diversity of the borough it calls home.

Recently, the museum has grabbed headlines for high-profile shows from "Giants," a very starry showcase of Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz's collection, to "It's Pablo-matic," the Picasso retrospective curated by comedian Hannah Gadsby, which caught a lot, a lot of heat.

But behind those headlines, the museum has been programming for its community. It has staged crowd-curated exhibitions, hosted pop-up markets, and served as a polling station. Its Spike Lee exhibition last year was accompanied by events including ASL and stroller tours intended to engage the community with a filmmaker who was also born and bred in the borough.

For almost a decade, the Brooklyn Museum has been led by director Anne Pasternak. She has sought to balance the needs of its audience as well as the evolving role of a cultural institution. It's a position that's been rewarding as much as it has been challenging. Ahead of the museum's 200th anniversary, I caught up with Anne, who shared more about the opportunities and headwinds facing the Brooklyn Museum today and what it means to lead the institution into its third century.

Next Episode

How Textiles Took Over the Art World

Contemporary art comes in many shapes and forms, but close your eyes and think of what an artist looks like and nine times out of 10, I bet you are still thinking of a painter in front of a canvas. If recent interest for museums and galleries is any indication, however, that image should be joined by another one: the fiber artist.

Think of a weaver seated at the loom or a quilt-maker laboriously stitching together layers of fabric. The textile arts have experienced a quiet but steady groundswell of interest in the last decades, and recently I've noticed that it feels as if it is kicked into a new, even higher level, from the many kinds of textile based art throughout the most recent Venice Biennale to the major show "Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction," which is on a tour of some of North America's most important museums right now.

As many textile scholars will tell you, tapestry was once as exalted as painting as an art form, and it may be so again. This surge of interest is bringing new audiences, new histories, and new vocabularies into the center of the action that are worth getting familiar with, and to unravel all the different threads, I turned to Elissa Author, a scholar who looked at the tangled history of fiber art in her book String Felt, Thread: The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art. More importantly, she's been closely observing and encouraging the contemporary boom in textile art as the chief curator at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. This week she joins me on the podcast to discuss what's behind the resurgence of interest in this medium.

—Ben Davis

Fiber Art Is (Still) Having a Moment

Artists working in fiber and textile are increasingly visible at art fairs, museums and galleries, and there's no sign of a slowdown.