Essays and Podcasts of June 2025
The fall of artspeak, A.I. filmmaking, the very thirsty Dark Enlightenment Art World, June's top museum artists, and Adrien Brody's painting.
Dear All:
Happy dog days of summer.
Lots of queasy stuff about A.I. knocking at the edges of art in weird ways in June. As for the more traditional center of art, I spent a lot of the month doing spreadsheet work, putting together my June Museum Artists list. And then, of course, there was Adrien Brody’s painting show, “Made in America,” to talk about (some pics below, for Brody lovers).
I’ll do an “all-things-non-art” diary tomorrow with some thoughts on Materialists, Minecraft, Mountainhead, Undertale, and a few other things…
All the best,
BEN
ESSAYS
— “Artspeak After Social Media”
Last year, I interviewed author Bianca Bosker about her book on the New York art world, Get the Picture. I still think about that interview, both for the things that Bosker’s book got wrong (like that galleries don’t care about New York Times reviews, or that the Nazis invented the “white cube” gallery), and for what her reporting unintentionally brought to the surface. I took this invite from e-Flux Journal as an excuse to use my lingering thoughts about Get the Picture as a jump-off point to talk about how theory, politics, social media, and status intersect in art at this moment. (For more on how digital circulation has already produced a rebalancing towards new types of intellectual community, I recommend The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet; for a defense of the kind of cultural difficulty I have in mind to defend, I recommend Dan Fox’s book Pretentiousness: Why It Matters.)
— “The Odd Experiment of A.I. Art Summaries in Venice”
A tiny little issue amid the full-court press of A.I. content right now. But I think it’s important to think carefully and specifically about how this stuff is getting deployed—exactly because it is designed to replace thinking. Two members of the curatorial team, Nick Axel and Daniele Belleri, wrote a response to my piece which you can read here.
— “I Have Seen the ‘Dark Enlightenment Art World’ and It Is Extremely Dorky”
There was a line I took out about how the artist collective that tech-monarchist Curtis Yarvin was working with gave off a vibe “like the House of Yes but without the Consenticorns.” I wish I’d kept it in, because one of these dudes DMed me after to say “thanks for taking the bait” with footage of him getting a lap dance. Real winner stuff.
— “Which Artists Are Big at U.S. Museums This Month? I Scoured Hundreds of Shows to Find Out”
Once again, Cara Romero is the most-shown artist at U.S. museums.
— “The Subtly Unsettling Logic of This Prize-Winning A.I. Film”
The more I have watched Jacob Adler’s Total Pixel Space after first seeing it take the top prize at the third International A.I. Film Festival, the slipperier and stranger its message has become (and the more significant its slipperiness and strangeness seems).
PODCASTS
— “The Round-Up: Tech’d Out Museums, Art Basel Takeaways, and Adrien Brody’s Awesomely Awful Art”
Lots of fun talking with Min Chen and Kate Brown about these topics. As I said in our chat but not on the show, “If Adrien Brody’s art show was an Oscar speech, it would be… Adrien Brody’s Oscar speech.”
Since I didn’t write about it, I’ll put some photos of it below, both to go with the audio and to share the joy.
APPEARANCES
— “Labor Conditions” at Expo Chicago
I see this panel I was on with curator Natalie Bell and artists Carmen Winant and Rodrigo Valenzuela went up on YouTube this month. I do not like looking at myself in this format! Good conversation, though.