The Art Angle Artnet News

It is time, once again for our monthly roundup where we talk about three of the big stories of the month.  In the summer sometimes the art news slows down, but the news news has not slowed down at all, of course. And we have three stories that we're going to talk about that are very much about where art and the news collide.
Today we're going to talk about the critical reaction to the instantly famous photo of Donald Trump with his fist raised in the air immediately after the attempted assassination on him two weeks ago in Butler, Pennsylvania. A lot of art critics said that this photo was so powerful, it could define the race. Art critic Ben Davis had his doubts.
Obviously, the news cycle moves very fast. This past weekend, Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed vice president Kamala Harris, and there's a whole new round of uses of the word "unprecedented" floating around. So we are going to talk about what, if anything, the lasting impact of this photo might be.
Why it got such a reaction, and what the perils of decoding news images through the lens of art are. Then we're gonna talk about the defacement of a goddess statue by the artist Shahzia Sikander in Texas, which had been protested as satanic, and the artist's decision to leave it in its damaged form rather than repair it as a statement.
And finally, we go down under to Australia for a story that has made international headlines. An artist created an art installation in the ladies' bathroom of a museum as a statement about sexism and gender discrimination, filling the washroom with Picasso paintings. But in a twist that has brought the story back into the news, the Picassos have now been revealed to be fake.
Is this a serious story? Is it silly? It's a question that Art Angle co-hosts Ben Davis and Kate Brown tackle along with this week's guest, our hardworking news correspondent Adam Schrader.

The Gladstone gallery director Alissa Bennett was one of a legion to fall under the thrall of Donna Tartt’s 1992 novel The Secret History. A years-spanning mystery told in reverse, the book has sold some five million copies and remains a cult fan favorite. It details a small cadre of college students studying ancient Greek at an isolated North East campus. Myth, reality, and ritual overlap and ultimately Dionysian rites collide with hubris.

Here is how Bennett sums up the protagonists: "while their fantasies ricochet around a technicolor past filled to overflowing with gods and mysteries and the seismic tragedies of Homer, their bodies remain tethered to a Taco Bell present."

The book has yet to be seen on the big screen, but Bennett has managed to find a super-low-budget obscure video art adaption from 2006, which is now on view as part of the "The Secret History," (on view through August 2) a group art exhibition she curated, on view now at Gladstone 64, the gallery’s upper east side outpost in a converted townhouse. The artists featured in the fascinating show range from familiar names like Matthew Barney, Rachel Rose, and Hope Atherton to younger artists like Matt Hilvers and Karyn Lyons, and her own personal astrologer (and former Art Angle guest) Micki Pellerano.

Bennett joined Artnet editor William Van Meter to discuss the show, and her meandering path in life that includes a stint as a runway model, a co-host alongside Lena Dunham of the acclaimed podcast The C-Word, a teacher at the Yale School of Art, and author of the zine "Dead is Better." Now, she holds a post as a gallery director, and along the way she remembers her mentor, Barbara Gladstone, the legendary gallerist who passed away last month.

Art and psychoanalysis have had a very long and intense relationship over the years, and it makes sense that these two fields would be drawn to one another. Critics have long looked at psychoanalysis as offering a sophisticated model of decoding images and fantasies. Artists have made productive use of ideas like the unconscious and the uncanny, and of course, are very concerned with the questions of self-expression and desire that are at the core of analysis.
One figure who has gained quite a bit of attention in art lately for her ideas on all these things is Jamieson. Webster. Webster is an analyst and a teacher, and is among the founders of Pulsion, a new school for psychoanalysis here in New York City. She's also the author of essays for places including The New York Times and the New York Review of Books, as well as books of her own, including the Life and Death of Psychoanalysis from 2019 and Disorganization and Sex from 2022.
Recently Webster spoke with art critic and podcast co-host Ben Davis about the fresh uptick of interest in psychoanalysis among artists now, the uses and abuses of therapy in art, and her new pamphlet titled The Psychoanalyst and the Artist, where she writes about what analysts can learn from two artists in particular, the sculptor Louise Bourgeois and the painter Carroll Dunham.

Summer is in full swing, which means that crowds from the world over are heading on vacation and many of them are descending in huge numbers into one of the most famous cities in the world—Venice, Italy.

Earlier this spring, the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale opened, curated by the highly esteemed Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa. His exhibition “Foreigners Everywhere” is a major feat, and a big talking point of the year. It features more than 330 artists, many of whom are participating in the biennale for the first time, and shines a light on artists who were woefully overlooked in their time.

There are multiple ways to look at the show and its title “Foreigners Everywhere,” which is inspired by a famous work of the same name by artist collective Claire Fontaine. It is both an acknowledgement of the artistic positions of exile of the immigrant or outsider, but also importantly asks of the audience to think about who exactly is a foreigner… and who is not. Pedrosa argues that deep down we are all foreigners, and this exhibition, which the curator describes as a “provocation,” arrives as the world is facing a multitude of emergencies centered around the very concepts of exile and belonging.

The reviews are in and well-worth reading; Artnet's critic Ben Davis has a great three-part review of the show, and host Kate Brown spoke to Pedrosa before the exhibition opening in a wide-ranging interview that we're revisiting this week. He offers tips on how to walk through the show, key background on the exhibition’s concept, and thoughts on how his show is repaying a debt.

Although the art business world may be on holiday right now, we're still pounding the (international) pavement to bring you a report of the most important and talked-about events in the art world right now. This week, hosts Kate Brown and Ben Davis are joined by Artnet's London correspondent Vivienne Chow for the monthly roundup.
Just two short weeks ago collectors, curators, museum bigwigs, and celebrities arrived in Basel Switzerland for Art Basel's flagship event. Dealers were quick to announce big-ticket sales, but there was an undercurrent of conversation regarding the so-called "doom porn" narrative swirling in the press. As Artnet News's Katya Kazakina has been reporting, the market is in the midst of a major correction.
Beyond the fair, where well-heeled visitors traipsed between the installation of Agnes Denes's iconic Wheat Fields and the beloved cow pastures, there was lots to see. In a recent editorial, host Kate Brown wrote about how social media algorithms are affecting performance art, and the trio discuss this trend in relation to the activations in and around the fair. Finally, the trio discuss the life and legacy of Barbara Gladstone, the highly esteemed art dealer who passed away at age 89.

 If you've seen the artworks of Marianna Simnett, you know that it is not easy to forget them. The multidisciplinary artist who works between film, installation, drawing, painting, sculpture, and even theater, is a world-builder of surreal and sometimes horrific proportions. Her works lodge themselves deep into your psyche with an unsettling amount of imagery, dark humor, and mythologically tinted storylines where animals may become nefarious protagonists, and roadkill might come back to life.
Simnett often deals with the body as a site of pain, control, vulnerability, and intervention. And her artworks may make you squirm or even evoke fear, and you may just find yourself wondering, 'am I supposed to be watching this?' I think the answer is yes. While Simnett's boundary-pushing art may not be for the faint of heart, as viewers it is important to be challenged, roused out of our complacency and our comfort zones, it is one way to become more empathetic. 
Simnett has been showing widely at institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. Her film, The Severed Tail, was a major talking point at the 59th Venice Biennale, "The Milk of Dreams." It tells the tale of a little pig who enters a fetishistic underworld after a farmer snips off her tail.
This coming fall Simnett will be included in Manifesta 15 in Barcelona.  Currently, the artist has a solo exhibition on view at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. Called Winner, it is part of the official cultural program for the Euro 2024 Soccer Championship, which is being hosted in Germany this year. In this multi-channel video installation Simnett takes on the world's and rituals of soccer, its fouls, injuries, social dynamics, and hooliganism.
I won't spoil it for you, but it is definitely soccer like you've never seen it before. On top of all that talent and accolades, Simnett is also a classically trained flutist. It's an instrument that I find compliments her wider art practice perfectly—its fantastical, folkish, a bit eerie, and definitely other-worldly.
On this episode of the Art Angle, Senior Editor Kate Brown speaks to Simnett, who also obliged us by playing the flute at the top of the episode.
All audio excerpts in this episode are included courtesy of Marianna Simnett.