This episode features the 1st half of the full episode. To get the full version, please visit: Patreon.com/theconversationpod    The Conversation Art Podcast | creating a podcast that goes behind the scenes of the art worlds | Patreon

Recovering art worker and author of the novel Thieves, Valerie Werder talks about:

Her entrance into the art world via her demanding position at a fancy gallery in her attempt, as a newbie, to get access and proximity to the art world;  her ability to conform and comply under pressure (in the gallery environment), and the what the flip side of that looks like; what the coercion, that came thru various forms of care and the engendering of a ‘family’ dynamic at the gallery, looked like and how it played out, including through fancy paid meals and credit for fancy clothes so she could look and act the part; how working at a gallery gave her a completely different relationship to language, including the quick turnaround she had to produce, becoming a ‘language producing machine’ in the process; the craft of writing a gallery press release, and how she ultimately became, upon writing her novel, the ‘commodity’ herself that she in turn needed to sell.

                                

                 

                                                               

Seattle-based artist and restorer Debra Broz talks about:

…living in Seattle, where she moved to from Los Angeles a year and a half prior to our call; how Seattle is full of rule-followers who are also anarchists/anti-capitalists; how she found her Seattle studio, where it was important to have decent heat, especially for her sculptures; her reasons for leaving L.A. for Seattle, and some of the lifestyle differences between the two cities, and how welcoming Seattle has been to her as a new artist; how various sites, specifically Colossal and the Jealous Curator, have been huge in growing her art & design-focused Instagram followers; her pacing and general approach towards her IG feed, where she’s made peace with the fact that she can only go as fast as she can go, nor does she want to try and gamify the system, and how, ultimately, IG is a “feel bad machine;” how Instagram has been punishing people who use it to have sales; the “enshitification” of apps (including IG and Tik Tok) and how it’s made our experiences on them so much worse; her sculptures, made from ceramic figurines, which were originally made for American middle-class homes; how the best places to find her sculptural elements are “out in the wild,” i.e. thrift stores, as well as friends giving her objects, which is her favorite way to acquire her materials; the “if we look for what we need, we’ll find it” serendipity that’s a driving force in Debra’s making process; and how the meme, “I didn’t realize being an artist was making the same thing 1000 times until you die,” is a sentiment very familiar to most artists.

BONUS Patreon footage of this episode includes: the history with Broz’s last name, pronounced “Bros” like “Rose,” which of course eventually arrives at “Bros before ‘Hos.” Her restoration business, the other side of her studio work, where she works with clients restoring their precious objects and keepsakes of all kinds, including one client who has his Picasso-edition ceramics restored; the breakdown of her income from artwork sales to restoration sales, which depends on the year but is often about the same;  her attitude about work, which she loves to do, but not the hustling part when she’s looking for shows and clients, her compulsion towards making whether sculptures or restoration…

If you would like to access Bonus Episodes of the show, to get more content AND support our podcast, please consider becoming a Patreon donor for as little as $1/month via the link below:

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Chris Wiley– Artist, New Yorker photography critic, and contributing editor at Frieze – talks about:

His fleeing upstate to the Catskills during the pandemic, and what his relative disconnect from the art world and the city has been like since the move (though he still keeps a small apt. in the city); the differences between English and American artists in terms of academia vs. the market; his epic two-part articles on Zombie Formalism, which covered not just the movement as a market phenomenon but also what it’s led to, including economic precarity and eventually what Wiley has dubbed ‘debt aesthetics;’ the term from the Crypto phenomenon that Wiley applies to many artists of Zombie Formalism, ‘Walk Away Like a Boss,’ to describe those who were able to earn a very solid chunk of money over their brief careers, often parking it in real estate for long-term security; how Zombie Formalist paintings were, as he put it, “’fast, fungible and friendly,’ just like what currency is;” artists who have the ‘it’ factor, an authenticity demonstrating they would be making their art no matter what; the great promise of a Universal Basic Income for artists, particularly in the context of a debt aesthetics that virtually forces artists to compromise their visions instead of getting to be weirdos; his current thoughts on the implications of AI, which he’s been interested in for a long time, having a father who was interested in computers and science fiction when he was growing up; how and whether artists will be safe in terms of jobs and sustainability in an A.I.-dominant landscape, and how the art world isn’t ready for the kind of speed with which A.I. advances will affect art; the AI-generated photography of Charlie Engman, who has been making a bizarre and prolific body of work using the platform Midjourney, despite being a ‘technophobe,’ in his own words; the challenged viability of a career as an editorial photographer with the rise of A.I.; and how his article on A.I. and Charlie’s work, in The New Yorker, pissed a LOT of people off, and why.

If you would like to access Bonus Episodes of the show, to get more content AND support our podcast, please consider becoming a Patreon donor for as little as $1/month via the link below:

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Chris Wiley’s articles discussed in The Conversation:

What Was the NFT?,
 The Toxic Legacy of Zombie Formalism, Part 1,
The Toxic Legacy of Zombie Formalism, Part 2,
A Photographer Embraces the Alien Logic of A.I.

                                

                 

                                                               

Michael Finkel discusses the remarkable story of Stéphane Breitwieser, the subject of his recent book, The Art Thief, including:

The genesis of the book project, starting with a three-paragraph article, and eventually turning into a 10+ year-project; the style and methods of theft that Breitwieser and his partner, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, put to work; Michael’s favorite Breitwieser crimes; his widely oscillating perception of Breitwieser, from a selfish brat to ‘the best art professor I’ve ever had;’  how Breitwieser protected both Anne-Catherine and his mother by lying on their behalf, but ultimately told the truth to authorities when it came to his own role in the crime sprees; Breitwieser’s Icarus-like trajectory playing out over several years as a result of his increasing addiction to art theft; a teaser of an ongoing plot point related to one of the Art Thief’s main characters, one which may very well be revealed in the soft cover release of the book; and how what Breitwieser and Christopher Knight, the protagonist of Finkel’s earlier book, The Stranger in the Woods, have in common is that they’re extreme outliers who make their own rules.

If you would like to access Bonus Episodes of the show, to get more content AND support our podcast, please consider supporting The Conversation on Patreon via the link below:

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In the first of many installments in which we parse and riff on the OLD NEWS, Deb Klowden Mann and I discuss:

1) the procedure of Indian/Indigenous land acknowledgement in making introductions

2) the widespread loss of value for NFTs, including their incredibly high energy requirements and climate impact, and how we feel about that;

3) the sexism and double standards involved in the trial of Robert Newland (who was involved in the Inigo Philbrick art Ponzi scheme)

4)  why museum workers are quitting, and the heavy burdens running art non-profits, which range from curating all the way to cleaning the toilets, including one non-profit director’s firsthand experience; Deb shares her inside knowledge of having worked in a non-profit arts org herself…particularly the thoughtlessness of the philanthropists/donors who support these organizations, but don’t actually support them by supporting a budget that affords staff a living wage.

5) A suit on behalf of the workers at the restaurant Kappo Masa, part-owned by dealer Larry Gagosian, for wage theft. From an Eater article: “The class action is alleging ‘that the restaurant violated New York law by withholding tips that should have been paid to the waitstaff, and also that it retaliated against the named plaintiff for telling the company about the tip theft.’”

6) the close of several downtown New York galleries right after Postmasters gallery left the neighborhood, among them JTT, Queer Thoughts and Foxy Productions…

7) finally, we sample a selection from the NY art critic Sean Tatol, who had previously been completely unfamiliar to us both, and discuss how his honest criticality is increasingly rare in art criticism these day, and we talk about our own respective art criticism consumption habits, and in turn Deb talks about her current IG consumption, and how specifically it affects her mental as well as physical health…a topic we’ll continue to discuss in future conversations.

If you would like to access Bonus Episodes of the show, like this one, which release once a month, please consider supporting The Conversation on Patreon via the link below:

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In Bonuse Episode 352, Bay Area-based artist Cathy Lu talks about:

Her residency at Kohler Art Center in Wisconsin, where she was when we spoke, working on a large sculpture based on the goddess Nuwa; how she stores her ceramics outside; her bi-coastal life teaching ceramics at School of Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts while still keeping a home base in Richmond (in the Bay Area), where she returns to about once a month during the school year; how the Museum School doesn’t have grades, but has a Review Board where students’ work is reviewed at the end of semester in a very thoughtful and supportive style, and how she uses her teaching platform to encourage cultivating community, including ‘clay club,’ and as a ‘gateway drug’ to California ceramics; her year-long residency at the Chinese Cultural Center in San Francisco, where in addition to exhibiting her own work over the year, she also curated artists she was excited about into the space, including performance; her students’ tendency to stay away from art/artmaking as a career, and how much class plays a role in who becomes artists and who is able to sustain being an artist, through outside (usually family) income streams; her day jobs before teaching became her main gig, including as an artist assistant and a very San Francisco (interesting) retail job; for the first time, finding some financial security as a full-time teacher, and yet not without having qualms about the state of academia.

If you would like to access Bonus Episodes of the show, like this one, which release once a month, please consider supporting The Conversation on Patreon here:

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This special episode features return-guest-but-more-co-host Deb Klowden Mann to discuss the recent New Yorker profile of mega-dealer Larry Gagosian. Deb starts us off by updating us on her closing of her eponymous gallery due to multiple health issues, which made the work unsustainable. We follow that update with our discussion of the article, including:

Our respective histories with Gagosian and/or his collectors mentioned in the article; how Gagosian’s decision to allow the profile may be because it humanizes him to the audience, but also, as Deb proposes, to make him and the gallery more appealing to younger artists they could possibly take on; Deb sites a book from the early ‘80s, “The Art Dealers: The Powers Behind the Scene Tell How the Art World Really Works,” which illustrates how when it comes to collectors treating art as investments, it’s been happening for nearly 200 years; how the funding that goes to high-priced artworks sometimes comes from the same people who fund grants/grant foundations, Deb suggests, and she advocates for a more transparent, as well as more evenly distributed financial model for the art world(s); Gagosian’s gallery courtship of the English artist Issy Wood, and what that scenario points to as far as his courtship process, the future of the gallery and his legacy plans, and the vulnerability apparent in that dynamic; Deb’s desire for more really well researched and written pieces (like this one by Patrick Radden Keefe) about how everything works in the art world; and finally, Deb brings up the book The Art of Death as a counterpoint to one’s amassing of power and wealth to stave off mortality, because in many cultures up until the 1800’s, one of the main functions of art was in fact to help people understand death as part of life and prepare them for it.

If you would like to access Bonus Episodes of the show (releasing once a month, two weeks after this one), please consider supporting The Conversation on Patreon here:

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Long Beach-based artist and former produce field worker Narsiso Martinez talks about:

Growing up in a small town in Oaxaca, Mexico (Santa Cruz Papalutla), with several brothers and sisters, and a mom and dad who were often on the road for work; his resistance and questioning of working in the fields, something his family did when he was growing up as a way to have food on hand in tighter times; a very condensed version of his travails in crossing the border from Mexico into the U.S., which took him 4 tries to do; his initial settling in Los Angeles with one of his brothers, who is in the car upholstery business; going to an adult high school to learn English as well as other classes, on his way to going to Cal State Long Beach for an undergraduate, and eventually an MFA degree; how he made his adult high school studies a higher priority than his day jobs, so if a job conflicted with school, he would leave the job; his ups and downs at LA City College, where he got his associate degree and may have gone into biology if it wasn’t for his lack of resident papers; what it was like working in the fields – physically as well as mentally – up in Washington state, where he picked produce including asparagus, cherries and apples, both for one full year, as well as over the summers between Cal State Long Beach school years; his gradual discovery of produce boxes that became the surfaces/objects for his paintings, starting with collecting a few boxes from a Costco; his complex thoughts and feelings about class differences, including thinking of himself as something of a role model for who people can become, as well as the importance of education, and family support, in making his long journey, which he describes as many different lives.

If you would like to access Bonus Episodes of the show (releasing once a month, two weeks after this one), please consider supporting The Conversation on Patreon here:

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Connecticut- and New York City-based artist Alexis Rockman talks about:

His semi-exodus from Manhattan, where he’s lived his whole life, to a rural part of Connecticut called Warren; leaving his Tribeca studio of 33 years and building a new one on the property of their house in Warren; his early love and interest in animals through his archeologist mom’s encouragement which led to everything from keeping fish, turtles and iguanas in his childhood room to going scuba diving and spending a lot of time in Australia, where his stepfather was from, encountering wombats, quolls, and large flightless birds; his appreciation of science fiction movies of the late 60s and early 70s, and how the ideas in those movies were an influence on his apocalyptic paintings; the origins of his painting ‘Manifest Destiny,’ which is in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum; his recent work, which is in conversation with historic painters – Courbet, Clyfford Still, Peder Balke – and the joy of painting in addition to addressing climate change; how he jumped for joy for ‘owning’ natural history, as a painter, when he first established his artistic vision at the start of his career in the mid-1980s; working as a vision artist for films, including Life of Pi and the remake of the Little Mermaid; and how he feels about his relative ‘fame,’ and the ebbs and flows of success.

If you would like to access Bonus Episodes of the show (releasing once a month, two weeks after this one), please consider supporting The Conversation on Patreon here:

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Hungarian billionaire Gabriela and artist and architect Andi Schmied talk about:

Andi’s residencies, across Asia and Europe, as well as the Triangle Arts residency in DUMBO, Brooklyn, where she first connected with her fellow Hungarian, the billionaire Gabriela; some of the developments around the world that led her to the realization that there’s a glut of useless, ultra-wealthy housing that’s not actually being used, particularly a complex of villas about 100 miles outside of Beijing, where the groundskeepers wound up squatting in the empty units; doing a residency in New York in 2016, when she encountered Gabriela for the first time, who would become her key collaborator for what would her project ‘Private Views;’ the world of ultra-high end real estate, including the dynamics of a real estate agent showing a penthouse apartment of a very tall building to a client, and how Gabriela navigated these experiences; the questions the real estate agents showing these penthouses and other very expensive apartments asked, and what that revealed about the world of the ultra-wealthy; the various ways super-tall buildings in Manhattan are impacting everything from income inequality to changing the flora and fauna in Central Park from the long shadows they cast.

If you would like to access Bonus Episodes of the show (releasing once a month, two weeks after this one), please consider supporting The Conversation on Patreon here:

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Art Advisor Lisa Schiff has been in the news over the last two weeks, because of lawsuits being filed against her by clients who weren’t given the artworks they paid for. Schiff has subsequently filed for bankruptcy.

How did this happen? Was there any indication, from the warm and thoughtful conversation I had with her in late 2014, that anything like this might unfold down the road? 

We re-visit Episode 99, from early 2015.

If you would like to access Bonus Episodes of the show (releasing once a month), please consider supporting The Conversation on Patreon here:

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Brooklyn-based artist Nancy Blum talks about:

Her relationship with Judaism, both growing up and as an adult, where her exploration of healing and self-soothing from generational trauma, which ultimately connects with her art; her alternative interpretation of the word ‘therapeutic,’ in relation to art-making, how it can be something deeply personal that artists are trying to share; the use of flowers in her work, which was radical when she started using them 20 years ago, and how their use has risen since the pandemic; her experience making it work as an artist in New York City, where she’s settled after many years living and working as a nomad; how artists can now have successful, legitimate careers anywhere in the U.S., and why she’s chosen to live in NY because it meets her needs and she loves it, even if it doesn’t love her; bringing a Buddhist approach to the way she thinks about her work can career, and how important it is for artists to have the tools to deal with discouragement so that they keep going; questioning what defines success for an artist, and how the distorted perceived norms of success and what we should be or have become vehicles of defeat and low self-esteem for artists; how meaningful it’s been for her to make the public art mosaic for the 28th Street Subway station, and how she wants her public works to do the work- healing, bringing joy to people, etc. – for her; her earliest public projects, which got her into making public art; and why university art teaching was unsustainable as part of her career path.

If you would like to access Bonus Episodes of the show (releasing once a month, two weeks after this one), please consider supporting The Conversation on Patreon here:

The Conversation Art Podcast | creating a podcast that goes behind the scenes of the art worlds | Patreon