The Conversation Art Podcast

A podcast that goes behind the scenes and between the lines of the contemporary art worlds, through conversations with artists, dealers, curators, and collectors--based in Los Angeles, but reaching nationally and internationally.

Episode 381- Arleene Correa Valencia: From rural Mexico to the Napa Valley and back, fulfilling a family dream 11/15/2025

Episode 381- Arleene Correa Valencia: From rural Mexico to the Napa Valley and back, fulfilling a family dream Napa, CA-based artist talks about: Why she lives in Napa, CA, and the two distinct versions of the town, for the wealthy and for the poor (“you’re either the owner of the vineyard, or you’re working the vineyard,” as she put it); how she’s the first generation to not be working the vineyards, his dad having worked the vineyard for a period before transitioning to hand-painting etched wine bottles for a winery (which he had to ultimately leave for lack of being paid enough because he didn’t have an MFA); her favorite wines by grape (Pinots and Cabs from Sonoma mainly), and more recently a master fabricator color theorist and surface touch-up artist; making her dad’s dreams to become an artist come to fruition through her; how she always refers to the work she makes as ‘ours,’ assuming everyone knows that her father always has a hand in the projects, in addition to consistently collaborating with makers from her culture of origin; the letters she exchanged with her father, while he was working to lay a foundation for the family to move to the U.S., among the artworks acquired by Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center; her complicated DACA (Dreamer) status, and the exhibition she was able to have in Mexico (in Puebla, about 2 hours from Mexico City) which ultimately allowed her to apply for, and get, a green card; how she had to defer her dream to go to a 4-year university or art school until she received DACA status, and then she got a Diversity Scholarship that allowed her to attend California College of the Arts, which she would never otherwise would have been able to afford; how one of her 1st interviews was for someone interested in learning about being undocumented in the arts (originally published in Hyperallergic, she had to have it taken down for legal reasons to protect her); how her various supporters propelled her into her art-making and her art school education, and in turn the questions she asks herself about how she can help others, undocumented and otherwise… This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: In the 2nd half of our conversation (available on ), Arleene talks about: How her mom comes from a family with 36 brothers and sisters, so is part of an enormous extended family; the BRCA mutation in her family, in which bodies are much more susceptible to various cancers, including breast cancer and ovarian; why ICE hasn’t been active in the Napa Valley area, very likely because people of wealth and/or power won’t allow their wine supply to be affected; how aware she is of her career and her sales, and that she’s proud of her production rate and the work her gallery is doing with her; the demand for her truck paintings, and why she has a need to make those paintings, not producing them for a paycheck; when she requested a collector give her more time to finish a piece that she wasn’t happy with, and re-made it; how integral her dad is to her work and her process, and how he’s celebrated along with her, if only through his tremendous pride in her, and that it wouldn’t all happen without him; the work they do with a tattoo family, and how it’s similar to the dynamic that she and her dad as a family do together, which she acknowledges is a bit like the man behind the curtain; her Tochtli (rabbit) tattoo, a symbol in her family that signifies selflessness and the ultimate sacrifice; how the evolution of her being tattooed, which started when she was 18, has been about honoring the story of her ancestry and claiming her identity, and how her brothers, like her, are acquiring full body suits of tattoos. /episode/index/show/theconversationartpodcast/id/39045995

Episode 380- London-based photographer and writer Michael Collins on the perils of photography, and art criticism, and why to give your viewers the benefit of the doubt 10/11/2025

Episode 380- London-based photographer and writer Michael Collins on the perils of photography, and art criticism, and why to give your viewers the benefit of the doubt London-based photographer and writer talks about: The flat where he’s lived for 35 years, which is getting ‘Wallace & Gromit’ crowded; how he keeps film in his deep freeze (aka freezer) as opposed to anything edible, and how he’s happy to shop for the day, while he points out that Brits see American refrigerators and are overwhelmed by how large they are; and by the way, we’re also bludgeoned by advertising here, compared with the UK and Europe; how he sees our social media consumption as giving in to the impulsive at the expense of the rational, a battle he gives in to daily for a half hour on IG…and how sometimes, you just want to look at a panda falling out of a tree; why readers (of books) make better viewers of artworks; how when his photographs are printed at full scale (4 x 5 feet) you can walk into them and how part of photography’s schtick is that it’s nosy, that it admits everything in it; his takeaways from giving a presentation at the , in which have the members bolted for the door at the break; the importance of 19th century photography to understanding the history of photography, and how it’s not shown enough in museums (at least in London); how he started studying politics, but switched over to art, initially stumbling into photography as an editor at a teenage girl’s magazine, then moving to The Observer, and then he became picture editor at the Daily Telegraph, where he realized, amidst a more rushed editorial structure that went with predictable stock photographers, that the most interesting photography was not there to fulfill another’s agenda, but in pursuit of independence, to fulfill its own agenda. This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: In the 2nd half of our conversation (available on Michael talks about: The challenges of evolving and following your own path at the expense of taking the more marketable route, which means maintaining your integrity, and how his photographs, and his writing are both better than ever; the complex and fulfilling experience he had visiting and re-visiting a ; how the photographer Martin Parr dominates the scene in Britain, and how all his pictures look roughly the same, and yet he’s kind of this hero in the country, through the ‘steamroll of publicity,’ and how there’s far more depth, wealth and nuance out there than we’re being allowed…; his first art review (for The Daily Telegraph), of , which uncovered a surprising digital edit, one he was turned on to by one of the museum custodians, and when he wrote the review that included his misgivings about the work, the Tate press office told him he was being cruel (to which he replied, “that’s not being cruel, that’s being honest”), and how another artist’s agent threatened to sue for a negative review; our respective takes on art writing and criticism, in terms of what he appreciates vs. can’t tolerate, and what I appreciate and can’t tolerate; more about the world of magazine editing, which he describes as being a lifetime ago…; and finally, to wind down our conversation, we talk about his book, Blind Corners, which features several essays exploring across the spectrum of photography and photography’s history; in particular we review a passage where he compares Americana via Kodachrome and Hollywood light with the dull, austere light of Britain, and he goes on to call out Dubai as the culmination of late capitalism. /episode/index/show/theconversationartpodcast/id/38550345

Episode 379- artist Linnéa Gabriella Spransy – growing up in a commune, Yale grad school, working as a living artist in Kansas City, and co-founding the gallery Bridge Projects 09/13/2025

Episode 379- artist Linnéa Gabriella Spransy – growing up in a commune, Yale grad school, working as a living artist in Kansas City, and co-founding the gallery Bridge Projects Pasadena-based artist talks about: Growing up between Wisconsin and a commune in Oregon, the latter which she describes as a complete commitment more than an experiment (the town was Wildeville, Cape Junction being the closest city); how you radically live out the life of Christianity, including giving away all their stuff, and how her father played in a Christian glam rock band that toured the world; having a positive commune experience, yet winding up ‘inevitably becoming part of the machine,’ aka capitalism, despite her wonderings as a child, which are still there; her period living and working in Kansas City for seven years after grad school at Yale, figuring out which voices to use in her work and make enough to have a house and a nice studio, and yet felt claustrophobic by its limitations and where she saw herself in the future if she had stayed there; her mantra in Kansas City, “if there’s no pressure, I still do it,” in determining what work she would keep making no matter what; her intense experience at Yale, where everyone, even the future stars, received harsh criticism for a range of reasons; the big advantages of artists who are extroverted charmers, especially in comparison to the ‘ambiverts,’ as Linnea calls them (and who we both essentially identify as), and even more so the more misanthropically aligned artists; her tenure co-founding Bridge Projects, a spiritually-oriented gallery in Hollywood, which had the misfortune of opening days before the pandemic. In the ), twice as long as episode 379/the public feed, Linnea also talks about: Her complex take on the existential state we’re in politically and culturally in the context of history, in which she identifies with people from numerous eras of the past, confronting their own challenging times and what we have in common; her experience living in Pasadena as a diverse place with a significant history and culture, and, as a neighbor to Altadena, what their respective roles have been as neighborhoods for artists in the context of the Eaton fire; her different working methods, from the through-the-process-oriented abstraction, as opposed to her much more research-based figurative work…she describes each of them as working different muscles; in the context of her ‘growing a human person,’ as she put it, the importance of having a rich internal life, interesting things, interesting people…; and whether she should get a studio in an artist building downtown, vs. sticking with her garage studio at home. She also asks (and to some extent answers) a question in support of the future artist advice podcast, . /episode/index/show/theconversationartpodcast/id/38209365

Episode 378: Artist Camilla Taylor- "My House Burned Down" 08/09/2025

Episode 378: Artist Camilla Taylor- "My House Burned Down" , Los Angeles artist, and curator of “), talks about: Her childhood with complicated religious origins, between her Mormon LDS father and her mother who branched off to start her own organization (some might say ‘cult,’ per Camilla), and how art, for her and many artists, can often fit the functions that people are often looking for in religions (including being part of something bigger than themselves); how she’s really good at compartmentalizing, seeing difficult experiences from her life as existing in rooms in a house, where she can shut the door to any given room; the epic story of experiencing her house burning down in the Eaton Fire in Altadena-- from her 16-hour drive home from the Sitka Center residency in Oregon, to seeing it when she approached her part of the San Gabriel Valley, to arriving home and having the wind lift her off her feet, to their belated evacuation; and subsequently how she found out her and her partner’s house, and her studio, had burned down, and that that process of mourning has been like; how trauma has manifested from losing her home and studio, and the range of reactions she’s received, including a lot of suggestions that are tone-deaf; what insurance will cover, and the studio spaces she’s been loaned/gifted for now, putting off the need for having to rent a studio for the first time (since studios have always been attached to her living spaces). This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: In the 2nd/, Camilla talks about: How, because of her visibility as an artist, she’s been more fortunate than many others who lost homes/studios in the fire by receiving a range of resources that artists less visible have not; the lawsuits against Southern California Edison, who allegedly started the Eaton fire; the group show she curated, ‘My House Burned Down,’ at Track 16 Gallery, which included four artists who lost their homes in the Eaton fire, and four artists who lost their homes in prior fires, and how the show addressed a commonality in losing one’s home as an artist, with an extra emphasis on materiality; how while she doesn’t know what the right reaction is, when people learn that her house (and studio) burned down in a fire, she knows that the reaction that she’s going to rise above it, like the phoenix from the ashes, is absolutely not the reaction to have, because it’s hurtful especially in its negating of what happened to her; and we have an extensive exchange about what I have long referred to as “the P-word,” as in ‘practice, as in ‘my art practice, a word Camilla also hates, and she talks about why language has become so important in art/the art world, including her take that artists overcompensate in art because, essentially, we/art is so unimportant to everyone else; and Camilla shares her favorite and least favorite art-speak words; and how in her teaching she’s honest with students about how their work affects her, as opposed to making art historical comparisons. /episode/index/show/theconversationartpodcast/id/37745340

Episode 377- “An artist walks into a bar…” Guy Richards Smit on his New Yorker cartoons, his paintings, and humor in art 07/04/2025

Episode 377- “An artist walks into a bar…” Guy Richards Smit on his New Yorker cartoons, his paintings, and humor in art Brooklyn-based artist and sometimes New Yorker magazine cartoonist returns to the podcast eight years after his first visit to talk about: His admitted high self-regard, paired with self-awareness, which we identify as being rare; our respective experiences and takes on artist blowhards; his history with cartooning, going back to his obsession with gag cartoons, going back to a New Yorker cartoon book he read at his grandparents’ house when he was a kid; how he started making his own gag cartoons; the steps he took to build his cartoon portfolio, leading to getting published in the New Yorker after a year and a half of submitting (which is much quicker than some); the cartoon he made for the New Yorker website, the ‘Daily,’ that went viral (receiving 1500 comments, not to mention other viral stats), including getting re-created in Turkish by a Turkish cartoonist; how he actually sees the cartoons as sketches for paintings (and gets quite painterly in the making of them); how about half of his cartoons are more insider-baseball-art cartoons, and the one he made that references one artist that he had in mind, although several reactions interpreted it as another artist, whom Guy actually heard from, wondering if it was about them. In the 2nd half of our conversation, available to , you’ll hear Guy talk about: How the parameters for where art can come from have changed, and how humor in art is still held, especially in the U.S., as a bit off limits; how his desire to paint a rock led to his Sisyphus cartoon (every cartoonist wants to do a Sisyphus cartoon); his desire to make a put out cartoons that are beautiful, not really a quality that the cartoon editor, or even cartoon consumers, are necessarily looking for; why the New Yorker cartoonists haven’t been able to form a union, which is related to why there aren’t really any other high-profile venues for gag cartoons to be seen; how he didn’t have a gallery for 15 years, and was “forced to sell” his own work, using Instagram successfully for sales in the pre-algorithmic takeover era, when he got three to four times more engagement than he gets now (and thankfully for him he now doesn’t require sales thru IG as much); his new dealer, Adam Cohen, who opened the gallery A Hug from The Art World three years ago; and how wanting to draw a Miro sculpture led to one of his most popular and most responded to cartoons at the Independent art fair in NYC this past spring. This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: /episode/index/show/theconversationartpodcast/id/37280810

Episode 376: Merging art & life and leaving the city for the country: artist couple and collaborators Gribaudi-Plytas. 06/07/2025

Episode 376: Merging art & life and leaving the city for the country: artist couple and collaborators Gribaudi-Plytas. In Episode 376, Alex and Theo talk about: Their location in rural France, at the southern end of the Champagne region, where there are tons of vineyards, many of which they take friends from out of town to, and how even in their minimally populated area they see plenty of income inequality; how they met while living in London’s version of dorms for art students, even though they were going to art schools that weren’t at all near each other, and how they evolved from friends to romantic partners to romantic partners who make art collaboratively; Theo’s art school professor, Leigh Clarke, who looked through the class’s sketchbooks, and if they didn’t past muster he’d throw them in the trash (it was symbolic); how they organically evolved into making art together as a pair, and what the advantages (and occasionally disadvantages) are, including the energy from vibing off each other’s ideas, and how one can inspire the other and v.versa; how their life is their art, particularly with the evolution of their home/home studio and garden, all together as a piece. In , Alex and Theo discuss: Their perpetual moving in and moving out of studios in London, each after just a year or two, because they got priced out or the situation was unsustainable, and how they’re translating the various functioning areas of those fleeting studio spaces to this permanent one, which is still very much a work-in-progress after three years (it’s a former school house built in 1879 and a house next door); their 24-hour work/artmaking sensibility, which they make sound quite appealing, a world in which breakfast can be art, or they can be working on art-related sewing while watching a film; why they left the city for the country, even when they had such a wonderful time during art school and beyond in London; the details of their property, including the view into the forest, where hunting takes place (and which we discuss); their complex relationship using Instagram (they don’t like to but need to); Theo’s sister, Sarah Rosenzweig, who they both admire for getting off of Meta platforms despite living in the mountains in the south of France (she sends out calendars and advocates for progressive political causes). /episode/index/show/theconversationartpodcast/id/36903115

Episode 375: Marcie Begleiter on artist residencies, working with nature, leaving big cities, and much more 05/10/2025

Episode 375: Marcie Begleiter on artist residencies, working with nature, leaving big cities, and much more an artist based on the Central Coast of California, talks about: artist residencies, including the , where she recently did a 4-week residency, including collecting biological specimens/samples; how her time and relationship with the residency evolves over those four weeks, which has lead to artistic breakthroughs; how she likes deadlines, and can structure her residency experience with the clock ticking and puts extra focus on what she’s doing, and in addition having the support of the people running the residencies; the importance of the artist statement in applications for residencies; what her experience was like at Sitka, from where she stayed (at an offsite house as opposed to the onsite cabins) to how she spent her days and nights, and what her studio days are like on a residency vs. the studio where she lives; why she left New York (Manhattan) for, initially Taos, N.M., and eventually California (essentially she needed more access to nature); and the interdisciplinary program she started at that focuses on social change in the community. In the 2nd half of our conversation, which is , she talks about: how she’s restarting the local CERT (citizen’s emergency response training) training in her unincorporated town (of Los Osos, CA), partially inspired by not having much access out of her area in an emergency; how she and her husband came to leaving Los Angeles for Los Osos, back in 2015/16, after she toured extensively with her documentary on the artist Eva Hesse; the benefits of living in a small town (Los Osos) which she prefers to city life; the lucky circumstances of having a great studio space in a location where you wouldn’t expect great studios; why she vastly prefers a studio outside her home; she breaks down the different type of residencies: 1) fully funded plus stipends…2) fully funded, no stipend….3) highly subsidized…4) paying full ride; and finally, she addresses our standard finishing questions: how does she feel like social media in this moment, and how success is defined across various careers in the arts. /episode/index/show/theconversationartpodcast/id/36519325

Episode 374: “The Murder Next Door,” Oakland-based graphic artist Hugh D’Andrade’s first graphic novel 04/12/2025

Episode 374: “The Murder Next Door,” Oakland-based graphic artist Hugh D’Andrade’s first graphic novel Oakland-based graphic artist Hugh D’Andrade, author of the graphic novel “The Murder Next Door,” talks about: His first graphic novel, The Murder Next Door, including what led him to finally making a graphic novel after being a big fan of them for a long time; studying fine art at the California College of Arts and Crafts back in the 1980s, and then going back to the same school, now called simply California College of the Arts, to get a masters in graphic novels; graphic novelists who have been influential to Hugh, including Adrian Tomine from nearby Berkeley, Chris Ware, who he refers to as both a giant and a genius in the field, as well Art Spiegelman, Thi Bui (whom he had as one of his graphic novel professors), Marjane Satrapi, and Phoebe Glockner; how the graphic novelists he’s met have generally been very talkative and have quirky sensibilities, but also have introverted streaks which are necessary for long stretches alone that are necessary for producing their work; how he worked on the beginning of his graphic novel while in grad school, where the crits were very nurturing and supportive, unlike crits from back in the day (undergrad); where graphic novel reading falls in our attention economy; the value he puts on the hand-drawn in comics, with modest digital intervention; and how Vipassana meditation, the first chapter of the book, played a big role in Hugh’s healing journey…. [the Conversation continues for another hour in the BONUS episode for Patreon supporters] In the 2nd half of the full conversation (available to Patreon supporters), Hugh talks about: the distinction between cartooning and illustration, and how challenging it is to render a person from multiple views in that style; what feedback he’s gotten so far, with at least one reader saying that it was ‘very unique,’ probably meaning they found it too dark; the roll his parents played (or didn’t play) in healing from his trauma (the murder the book is focused on); his trolling of conspiracy theorists on social media (which is described in the book), which came out of his reaction to people making things up about who was responsible for the murder, along with the pros and cons of engaging with a conspiracy theorist; his description of 3 or 4 major career trajectory paths for artists in big art capitals, inspired by his nephew and students and their impending career paths- the A path/A-train: rock star; B path/B train: you have a partner who has a job/supports you financially; C path/train: artist with a day job; D-train: you live just outside of a major city, or in a college town, or rural areas; housing in the U.S., particularly in the art capitals (a sort of passion of both of ours) and how he bought a house in East Oakland, a part of the city he had never been in and he’d been living in the East Bay for decades; how he’s in a ‘coffee dessert,’ meaning he needs to drive at least 10 minutes to get to a good coffee spot, leading to a beautiful paradox: as a participant in gentrifying his neighborhood, he realizes that as soon as that fancy coffee place pops up in his neighborhood, the gentrification will essentially be complete; the neighborhoods Hugh lived in in San Francisco, particularly the Mission, Hayes Valley and the Tenderloin, and their respective reputations and what he experienced living there as an older young person going to punk shows and the like; his friend Rebecca Solnit’s book Hollow City, about how gentrification displaces people of color as well as creative communities; we dig quite a bit into the weeds of the housing crisis, and how he lived on the cheap in the Bay Area for years, including getting around by bike up until 10 years ago; and finally he talks about his music show highlights over the years, including his changing relationship to the Grateful Dead over the decades. /episode/index/show/theconversationartpodcast/id/36111230

Episode 373: RealTime Arts’ Molly & Rusty on interactive happenings in Pittsburgh, where it's all about "Feeling the bean" 03/15/2025

Episode 373: RealTime Arts’ Molly & Rusty on interactive happenings in Pittsburgh, where it's all about "Feeling the bean" In Episode 373, , co-founders of in Pittsburgh, talk about: The especially niche field of their work, which is the performance of live theater that aligns more with visual art and doesn’t really check any of the ‘theater’ boxes, and how they have interactive elements but don’t confront the audience the way a lot of performance art does (they describe a “lot of conventions around theater… that contemporary audiences have trouble with…”); their series “People of Pittsburgh,” whose tagline is ‘Theatrical Portraits of Extraordinary Ordinary Pittsburghers;’ the size of their audiences and how they’re shows are often tailored to the neighborhood’s they take place in, and how they make their performances as open to all as possible, with a ‘radical hospitality’ option whenever possible; their hosting of Little Amal, the puppet of a Syrian refugee girl that travels the world doing performances amidst community and how their version added a play that incorporated a massive local crowd; their rock performance, ‘Angelmakers: Songs for Female Serial Killers,’ which was a tight show, as compared with their more experimental and improvisatory shows, and how they got a much more mixed audience, including concert-goers to a rock concert, for that show. This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: In the extended Full Patreon Bonus Episode, Molly & Rusty talk about: how they financially support their program, through a mix of fundraising, grants and occasional ticket sales; the gentrification that’s happening in Pittsburgh, which they admit to being a part of, and moved there because they wanted to be somewhere they were needed, as artists, and was a perfect medium in between a big city and a small rural town; Pittsburg’s cohesive art/cultural community, which reminds Molly of 1990s Austin, TX, when she played in bands; how she consider their work multi-disciplinary, influenced both by site-specific work, and that they’re descendants of the happenings of the ‘60s and ‘70s (including Claes Oldenburg and Robert Wilson); their current approach to social media (including looking into leaving Meta platforms); how connecting is a large part of success; and how they feel about connecting with the podcast’s Open Call (the short answer is: ‘really good’). /episode/index/show/theconversationartpodcast/id/35708930

Episode 372: Painting, photography, and hard but necessary decisions: Claire Witteveen, an artist in Amsterdam 02/15/2025

The White Pube, featuring Gabrielle de la Puente, on 'Poor Artists' and more 01/26/2025

Taking a Break from Meta- please join me in Boycotting all Meta platforms this week 01/21/2025

Epis. 370: Bullish on Miami 2024- SCOPE Art Show founder Alexis Hubshman 01/04/2025

Epis.#369: Cancel Culture Part 2 (Louis C.K.) and getting Stickered and Nan Goldin’s Gagosian show 12/14/2024

Episode 368: Tulsa Kinney on her 18 years running Artillery magazine and her complicated relationship with the art world 11/23/2024

Epis. 367: Lisa Schiff’s bankruptcy, trashing Paul McCarthy’s WS/White Snow, painting underground, and pairing smells with artworks-- OLD NEWS continues with co-host Emily Colucci. 11/02/2024

366: Cancel Culture, an art/fireworks performance gone wrong, the art market, and strategic gallery going- Emily Colucci of Filthy Dreams co-hosts the OLD NEWS 10/05/2024

Epis. 365: Brooklyn artist Liz Ainslie: a coveted artist loft, scream-core singing, and artists who stay with the community even after success 09/14/2024

Episode 364: Turner Prize-winner Jesse Darling may or may not keep making art; new OLD NEWS with co-host Dr. Maiza Hixson 08/24/2024

Epis. 363- Friendship and Fraud in the Art World, with author and former art dealer Orlando Whitfield 08/03/2024

Epis. 363- Friendship and Fraud in the Art World, with author and former art dealer Orlando Whitfield Writer, former art dealer, and author of , talks about: His interest in street photography, and how philosophy and critical thinking led him to apply and then attend Goldsmith’s College; a quick update on his former friend, co-worker, collaborator and employer Inigo Philbrick, who in the book was sentenced to seven years in prison but has since been released, and how he sent a heckler to one of Orlando’s book readings; how and why Orlando feels Philbrick has changed since the time of their friendship and working relationship, particularly in the last 7 years, about the time that he began committing fraud in his private art dealings; the various ways Orlando wasn’t cut out to be a dealer, particularly the perpetual let-downs after a seemingly very interested buyer (from a pool of too wealthy, feckless, collectors) suddenly pulls out, and how 9 out 10 deals die on the vine; the challenge of indoctrinating new collectors from his and his gallerist partner’s (Ben Hunter) friends- they could either go on holiday or buy art, not both, and so opted for the former; his involvement in a complex secondary market sale of a Christopher Wool work on paper, including the various stresses and complexities which ultimately, even though lucrative for Orlando, made him feel like a fraud. To listen to the full episode with Orlando Whitfield, please become a Patreon supporter of the podcast here: In the 2nd half of the episode, available to Patreon subscribers, Orlando discusses: The very wealthy inhabitants of the art world, many of whom Orlando encountered, and their separation from, and sometimes even contempt for, those who aren’t also rich themselves; how in his transition to becoming a writer, he’s found the writing world/community much more open and welcoming than the art world; how he finds the way the art world operates is like an aristocracy, where you’re not told the rules until you’ve broken them; how All that Glitters has sold well thus far in the U.K., and how the rights have been purchased for television by a UK production company; and who Orlando thinks should play Orlando, who Inigo thinks should play Inigo, and who I think should play Inigo in the film version of the book. /episode/index/show/theconversationartpodcast/id/32426527

Art protests, artist ruptures and Miranda July: the latest OLD NEWS w/special guest Maiza Hixson 07/06/2024

Epis. 361- Adam Henry on what makes a successful show, and navigating the fluctuations of the art market 06/09/2024

Epis. 360- How to Navigate Downward Mobility as an Art Worker- Valerie Werder, Part 2 05/11/2024

Journalist Bianca Bosker: a ‘normie Philistine’ dives into the art world working for artists, dealers and as a museum security guard in attempt to unravel its mysteries 04/06/2024

Journalist Bianca Bosker: a ‘normie Philistine’ dives into the art world working for artists, dealers and as a museum security guard in attempt to unravel its mysteries , journalist and author of , talks about: The genesis of her deep dive into the art world - working with gallerists and artists, doing art fairs and galleries with collectors, and doing a stint as a security guard at the Guggenheim Museum – which largely came out of her need to learn whether she could learn to ‘see’ like an artist, as opposed to a ‘normie Philistine,’ as she was called by many (she was also, as a journalist, called “the enemy”); the elitism, opacity and various exclusionary art world rules she discovered from dealers and artists she encountered through her immersion process, and how “dishearteningly little” artists themselves often knew about how the art world works; how parts of the art world use secrecy as part of their survival, to build mystique, among other reasons; how she worked for five different artists in the course of researching the book, but ultimately only wrote explicitly about two – Julie Curtiss and Amana Alfieri – in the book; how Context – everything about the artist (social cache, etc.) EXCEPT the art itself is often overly valued, and something she pushed back against; how she was drawn to working with emerging artists, and wound up working with the painter Julie Curtiss at a turning point moment in her career, in which she was both starting to make a living from her work but also getting bullied on social media for her work’s huge price escalation on the secondary market; how brave it was for Julie to let Bianca so thoroughly into her studio and make herself so vulnerable; and why she got so pumped after making sales while on the floor of the Untitled Art Fair with Denny Dimin gallery, without actually getting any payment for those sales (due to journalistic integrity). /episode/index/show/theconversationartpodcast/id/30710973

Valerie Werder turns her intense years working for a blue-chip gallery into an inspired novel, Thieves 02/24/2024

Valerie Werder turns her intense years working for a blue-chip gallery into an inspired novel, Thieves This episode features the 1st half of the full episode. To get the full version, please visit: Patreon.com/theconversationpod Recovering art worker and author of the novel , 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. In the 2nd half of the episode, Valerie talks about: her creative workarounds to promote her book, including using two very different kinds of publicists, and how throughout her professional career she’s been aware of and pushed against the given economic constraints, and how she believes it’s important to be explicit and unashamed about everything from her day jobs to the creation of her (writing) brand; the difference between the mythologizing/branding of artists back in the days of a much smaller (yet cut-throat) New York art world (of Donald Judd, Robert Smithson and Walter De Maria et al.) and the more diffuse, digital world of today, and how in her book she wanted to explore the legacy and imprint of the peripheral art world figure ‘Valerie’ the character who herself was invisible but whose writing, through catalogues and press releases, was/is all over the art world, and in the process the real Valerie the writer becomes a visible figure, a brand herself; the strange relationship she had with her former gallerist boss, whom she became the voice for in press releases and personal emails and even interviews, and how she studied her and had the writings of her voice vetted by the gallerist herself, for which she was valued highly for absolutely being ‘her voice;’ how she wrote her book on an ‘unpaid sabbatical’ from her job at the gallery, in a friend’s cabin in Tennessee, and the complicated circumstances in which she quick her job upon returning from that ‘sabbatical,’ which she told the gallery was an artist residency; her doubts about whether her gallerist employer read her book (Thieves); the actual front desk worker (aka gallerina) protocol employed at the gallery where she worked, as far as how to treat different people who came into the gallery, whether they were VIPs who should be greeted by name (through the gallerina memorizing the faces of those collectors) or lowly artists/nobodies who could be ignored; her experience getting a once-over from a wealthy collector at the gallery, and giving that once-over right back to him; Frank Stella and his provocative artwork titling, and how it somehow wasn’t Valerie’s job to really do research about his work, despite the gallery selling it. /episode/index/show/theconversationartpodcast/id/30092643

Epis. 357- Seattle artist Debra Broz on her studio routines, love of work as well as successfully navigating "the feel bad machine" that is Instagram 01/27/2024

Zombie Formalism, Debt aesthetics, and AI & Art: New Yorker writer/critic Chris Wiley 12/02/2023

Zombie Formalism, Debt aesthetics, and AI & Art: New Yorker writer/critic 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. /episode/index/show/theconversationartpodcast/id/28899888

Epis: 354- the Art Thief, the remarkable story of art history's most prolific stealer, with author Michael Finkel 10/14/2023

Epis. 351- veteran co-host Deb Klowden Mann joins to discuss Money on the Wall, an epic profile of dealer Larry Gagosian 09/02/2023

Epis: 349- Narsiso Martinez on his epic story from Oaxaca to California, from picking produce in the fields to becoming a full-time artist 08/05/2023

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