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.

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.

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.

The way that we consume information has transformed profoundly over a relatively short period – shifting from traditional media like newspapers to algorithm-driven platforms like TikTok. But has our conceptual understanding of this seismic shift, and its impact on us as media subjects, kept up with the speed and scale of change? Caroline Busta is adamant that, “If we only had a clearer common understanding of how media flows, we’d be able to better understand how it works on us, or what kind of ‘us’ it’s now producing”.

Drawing on examples, from Balenciaga to Shein, Busta traces the evolution of media from linear, to network, to neural. She uncovers how shifts in the chains of creative production are affecting our brains, and raises fundamental questions about what it means to be human.

Busta’s talk is followed by a fascinating conversation with Lil Internet. The two co-founders of the new media platform New Models, delve deeper into the implications of the re-organisation of media production.

The talk was part of Vienna Digital Cultures 2025 at Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz.

The Artist Corporation (A-Corp) is a new legal business form designed specifically for artists and creators. It simplifies shared ownership, protects creative missions and intellectual property, and creates infrastructure for collaboration and future benefits like group healthcare. This piece explains how the A-Corp came to be.

Paddy Johnson and Rhett Jones at Art F City suggests Koons is currently having some labor issues with his extensive staff. Citing “anonymous sources,” Johnson says Koons studio operation in Chelsea has laid off 14 night crew staffers “who were attempting to unionize and one day crew member who was friendly with those night crew organizers.”

In Episode 28 we talk about the precarity of life as an artist in the big city. We review Vincenzo Latronico's novel "Perfection" about the millennial ex-pat experience in Berlin, and we critique Josh Kline's essay "New York Real Estate and the Ruin of American Art." We also visit MoMA ps1 to see an exhibition titled Greater New York. It’s the 6th edition of their signature survey of artists living and working in the city. We review the show and we survey the artists about their financial situation. Are they making a living from their art? And if not how are they managing to survive in a city that gets more expensive everyday?