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.

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