The Art Angle

Why Are Museum Wall Texts So Bad?

The humble wall label at an art exhibition has a funny status. It feels, on the one hand, like a side note or an afterthought. On the other, it is a first point of contac

The Etruscans Made Astonishing Art. Why Aren't They Better Known?

The ancient Romans called the Mediterranean mare nostrum, "our sea." But before the Romans rose to power, the Etruscans had extensive trade networks in the area and contr

Why Artists Keep Turning to Tarot

Artists and creatives have been fascinated with tarot for over 600 years. Recently, that fascination has resurfaced in a big way, showing up everywhere from museum walls

Welcome to the World of Julio Torres and Martine Gutierrez

Julio Torres and Martine Gutierrez share a knack for building worlds and characters that operate on their own wonderful, absurdist logic. Throw them together, add some se

What's New in New York Art?

We’re in the hot dog days of August, awaiting the new art season to kick off in September. In the meantime, I thought we might take the temperature of art in New York, lo

Here's Where the Art World Eats

At the end of last year, Annie Armstrong stepped down as Artnet's gossip columnist after filing 198 Wet Paint columns over the span of more than four years. Gabi Vidal-Ir

An Untold History of the Art Market

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 cen

Re-Air: The Magic of ‘The Artist’s Way’

In this re-air of an episode from last year. Ben Davis speaks with Julia Cameron, the author of The Artist's Way. It is a somewhat unusual subject for us, but it's also b

Welcome to the Society of the Psyop

It is a time of disorienting, sometimes surreal shifts in the worlds of politics and technology. There aren’t too many artists who you might trust as a guide, but Trevor

The Case for M.C. Escher

There are only a very few artists from the 20th century who are truly household names, figures like Salvador Dalí, Frida Kahlo, and Andy Warhol. The name M.C. Escher is c

How Doug Aitken Thinks in Music

Doug Aitken’s new installation Lightscape has just landed at the Shed in New York. It is many things at once: a seven-screen film, an immersive environment, and a stage f

How to Make a Sculpture With Sound

Some of the most important visual artist working today are sound artists. It seems that sound in general has been growing in importance at the museum recently. Exhibitio

What Does It Take to Keep Art Basel on Top?

This week the art world descends on Basel, a Swiss city on the Rhine River, where the latest edition of the world's most important modern and contemporary art fair is tak

Roberta Smith Still Has Notes

Roberta Smith is the exemplar of popular art criticism. For almost four decades, Smith was a familiar voice on the arts pages of the New York Times, serving for many of

Re-Air: How Raphael Made—and Unmade—the Renaissance

This week we're re-airing a favorite episode featuring Kate Brown interviewing Ben Davis about the “Raphael: Sublime Poetry” blockbuster at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Arthur Jafa's Radical Theory of Readymade Art

Arthur Jafa is probably the most revered artist of the last decade. Born in 1960, in Tupelo, Mississippi, he came up through the world of cinema. But Jafa also found his

How Is Arts Patronage Changing?

During fair week in New York in mid-May, Andrew Russeth had the high pleasure of moderating a panel about the state of arts philanthropy at TEFAF New York. Joining him on

Does L.A's Bold New LACMA Museum Work?

Los Angeles has a new museum. Or a new vision for an old one. One of the most important museums in the country, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has just debuted a l

The Most Provocative Performance in Venice

At the Venice Biennale, every two years, we expect big things from the artists picked to represent their countries. But I'm not sure anyone can quite prepare themselves f

What Biennials Reveal About the Art World

We talk a lot about biennials. Art is in some ways a very local, in-person thing. Yet artists and creators and writers are also part of a global conversation, looking at