The Art Boom in the Middle East, Are Old Masters Cool Now?, and a Fresco Fracas in Italy

0:02They killed the chronological feed. Bring back the chronological feed if anyone's listening in Silicon Valley. Do it. And you know what's the ultimate chronological feed? Is art history. Yeah, literally. It's true.

0:21I'm Kate Brown and this is The Art Angle, a podcast from Artnet News.

0:34hey everyone it's time for our monthly news roundup where we discuss some of the biggest stories emerging in the art world on the heels of the first ever art basil cutter we'll be discussing the middle east market and the art scene there then we'll be doing a vibe check on the contemporary art scene's current obsession with old masters art history and dead artists And finally, we'll rove over to Italy, where an angel looks a lot like Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Maloney. With us today, as always, is Ben Davis, my co-host. Hey, Ben, how are you? Hello, Kate. Nice to talk to you. Great to have you here.

1:06And our guest this month is none other than London-based Margaret Kerrigan, our news editor and host of our sister podcast, The Art Market Minute. And Maggie, you're also the co-author behind our art market newsletter, The Backroom. It's great to have you. Thanks so much for having me. For those who aren't yet tuned into the art market, I'll just say a few words about it. It's a micro podcast which drops every Monday morning, highly snackable and highly informative listen that gives you everything you need to know about the art market in under three minutes. Is that the going number? That's what we try and keep it to.

1:36It might go a little over that if you got, you know, intro, outro, but that's my mark. Great. Yeah. So do check that and we'll put a link to that in our show notes. I love these roundup episodes where we have a really good geographic spread like this. So maybe we can start with you, Ben. What's going on in New York? Well, I got to see the Aeong Kim show at MoMA PS1. Kim is a Korean artist. But this work has been pretty widely seen. It's the Delivery Dancer Codex trilogy of projects, which is becoming a big temporary reference. You've seen it, Kate? I saw it in Berlin at the Hamburger Vanhoef here, yeah.

2:14What'd you think? I thought it was really interesting. I mean, I think it was set up quite differently than PS1. What was on view at PS1? Oh, they are sort of, particularly the central installation or the one I spent most time with is, I don't know if I'd call it immersive, you know, overused word. But it's an installation where there are multiple screens hung in the center and you can sit around it. I really enjoyed this installation. I'm still thinking about it. It's science fiction parable, and it's very absorbing. It's lush. There's music that draws you in based around this conceit of a fictional Uber-like delivery service in a dystopian, time-slipping future with multiple identities.

3:02And it shapeshifts all the time in terms of its aesthetic. And it's interesting. I'm very interested in the anime-esque. You know, anime's influence in contemporary art, that's in there. And then I guess I'm sort of thinking about how this is different than just a normal anime project. The themes, science fiction, identity, play, time travel are all the same. So I'm wondering if there's this kind of moment where all the different mediums are kind of converging into one and what that means for art while I'm sitting there observing a story. But yeah, definitely worth checking out. I remember there was like a video game that you could play in the Hamburger Bahnhof edition.

3:42But yeah, really interesting. Well, if there was a video game portion of this show, I missed it, but I want to go back anyways. Kate, what have you seen lately? Oh, I was at the Berlinale last week, which is like the film festival here in Berlin. You know, I try to make it to things. I sometimes fail, but I did get to see this new documentary that premiered at Sundance earlier this year in January called Barbara Forever by this New York-based director. Bridie O 'Connor. And it was amazing. Barbara Hammer was your teacher at one point, you mentioned to me, I think. Yeah, I took classes from Barbara Hammer at the European Graduate School, you know, years ago.

4:20Very nice and very interesting artist. Yeah, she died in 2019 at 79, but she was a major pioneer in queer and lesbian film. And she created work that hones the lesbian gaze, and she made nearly 100 films. And so this documentary pulled a bunch of those together as well as, you know, real recent footage as recent as 2019 of Barbara. And what was really touching about it is it all documented her process of dying as well as like a sort of final artwork. It was very life affirming and empowering. Yeah. What about you, Maggie? You've been globetrotting quite a bit. Yeah, I've been on the move a bit.

4:55Earlier this month, I was at the opening of the Dhiria Contemporary Art Biennale in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, which was really cool. I'd not ever been to Riyadh before. So that was like its own kind of adventure for me. But then also the Biennale was really, I thought, really interesting. Some folks that had been there before said that it was a little bit smaller than previous editions, which I think was actually to its benefit because I was still pretty tired when I got through it. So I don't know if I could have taken it in much more. But there are a lot of artists there that were at least new to me, which I mean, is I think always one of the best things about going to these kinds of biennales and just kind of discovering so much work that you're so unfamiliar with.

5:36Ideally, it doesn't always happen, right? Yeah, exactly. Some of these biennials kind of feel like they're drawing on the same cast of characters. True. But this one felt like you were just actually discovering things? I think so. I mean, again, for me, like I'm not super well-versed in artists from that region and have been getting up to speed on a lot of what's happening in the kind of Gulf region. So I think it was particularly good for me. I also had the opportunity while I was there to go to Diria Art Futures, which is this new digital art center that they opened last year. And as context, Diria is like this historic kind of quarter on the outskirts of Riyadh.

6:11And it's just super cool looking. What was so interesting to me is that a lot of the works that I really enjoyed in the Biennale were digital artists of some variety. And I really thought that this kind of interest in and support for digital art was coming through in what was happening in Diria. And like there was a publishing collective that was on view at the Biennale that I thought was just so cool that they had a bunch of interactive sculptural material that looked at the advent of Arabic computers in the 1980s and like how that kind of shifted understanding of computers and their language and everything.

6:48And obviously like I couldn't understand any of it, but I could still play with it. And it was just a great installation. That's awesome. Wow. Why digital art? It's interesting to me. As far as I know, I think that Saudi Arabia in general has so many ambitious kind of cultural plans that they're putting into place over the last several years. And I think that they really want to establish themselves as like a thought leader in technology. And so what that's showing up as in the cultural sphere is this massive support for digital artists. Right. Interesting. That makes sense as per the Saudi 2030, which is all sort of future-oriented plans.

7:23Although I think they did pull back on their city in the desert, which was going to have the robot dinosaurs and the artificial moon. So I'm disappointed. Who knew that that seemed too ambitious? I don't know. At least we have installations about Arabic computing as compensation. So after you're in Riyadh, you jetted over to Doha to Qatar, Maggie. So maybe we could talk about Art Basel, Art Basel Doha, I should call it, the first edition that took place this month. Yeah, I mean, it was super cool, in my opinion. It was a lot different format than most other Art Basel fairs, which are usually like very sprawling and big and hierarchical in a lot of ways.

8:04You know, there's like the big galleries and the big booths downstairs. And you have, you know, as it kind of sprawls outwards, you get the smaller galleries and the more emerging galleries and a different sector and things like that. But this was a lot more egalitarian, I guess you could say, with the layout. They built it as boothless. There were still like walls and stuff. You have to have walls to hang some work on. But it was boothless in that like I think, you know, you didn't have people kind of sitting at desks working at their computers while you were looking at art. It was like a much more like curated view.

8:35You were kind of moving through an exhibition space in a museum or something. But wait, so no one could sit down? Oh, this is a great question. So every quote unquote booth had this little tiny bench thing. It was like a cubby slash bench. And all the exhibitors had to have all of their stuff put away in the cubby bench. And if they needed to sit down, they could sit on the cubby bench. Wow. Okay. Well, there's real innovation. Yeah, exactly. I would not be surprised if we see cubby benches at more fairs soon. You heard it here first. Right, because some of these galleries, like not to get off track too much, but some of these galleries really have like statement furniture.

9:14It becomes this whole language unto itself at these art fairs. But yeah. So who is walking through all these booths? Like who attended Qatar? I think there was a real mix. There was a lot of Europeans, I would say. There were a lot of collectors from Lebanon and Egypt. There was a contingent of like Saudi collectors. But I thought that was interesting. A lot of Saudi collectors didn't come until the second day. And I think they were kind of won over by it. I think they were unsure if they were going to bother coming. And then they decided, no, it actually sounds cool. I'm going to come through.

9:49There was a lot of buzz around it. A lot of big curators were there. I talked to Klaus Biesenbach from Berlin really quickly. He was the one that pointed out the cubby booths. He was like, this is revolutionary because you don't see people's water bottles laying around. I was like, the man's got an eye for design, for sure. It was an interesting mix, but notably there was not a lot of collectors from the U.S. there, which I don't think was really expected, especially because so many American collectors have been favoring Art Basel, Paris specifically, and then they obviously have Miami Beach to choose from as well.

10:21I think it's worth noting, too, that there are some other geopolitical factors in the mix that I think dissuaded some Americans and Europeans from coming to this edition. Notably, there's been a lot of military tension between the U.S. and Iran that's kind of affecting the Gulf region in recent weeks and months. And I think, you know, that's something that a lot of art types won't have had experience with, I think. And on top of that, you know, when I was in Riyadh the weekend before, you know, I overheard someone at a Sotheby's sale saying that they were kind of just reading the headlines. They were ready to get out and they were going to go home early rather than go on to Doha.

10:59And I actually think that speaks to a larger re-regionalization of the market that we're already seeing happen. I mean, there's threat of war in Europe, there's political destabilization in the U.S., and I think people are just kind of less willing to travel. And I think that those considerations play into kind of the larger, you know, geopolitical picture that we're being confronted with, regardless of whether you're in the art market or not. I think it's interesting about the Saudi collectors, just reading your coverage, there is a tendency to talk about the Middle East moment as a block, right?

11:39But it's actually multiple things. It's actually different power centers competing to be the center of this moment, right? Totally. I mean, I think there's a certain kind of collective energy as wanting to work as one economic unit. But within that, there's so many different, very specific kinds of contexts and rulerships and visions that are trying to put forward their own kind of plans for the next 20, 30, 50, 100 years right now. And it's very big, like, state-building projects that we don't necessarily see in a lot of other regions. And I do think that the Saudi contingent is actually really important because as one person on the ground put to me there, she's like, there's a lot of money in the other Gulf countries for sure, like Qatar, like the UAE.

12:29But, like, Saudi is the economy. Like, that is the biggest nation there. They have the biggest GDP. Like, you need those collectors to be there. You said in some of your coverage, you say they're trying to move past this stereotype that it's a royal fair, that the collectors in this region are mainly Middle Eastern royals of various kind. But it kind of was, right? Am I wrong? Just trying to pick out what really happened from the art fair reports, which is always very difficult. So again, just to caveat this, I don't really have a lot of experience traveling in the region up until the end of last year and took the opportunity to go on a couple trips in October and November before getting there in February.

13:14So I'm very much on my own crash course journey in this. But what I've learned so far is that every time I've been there, being in the Gulf is like this exercise in holding multiple truths at once. So I do think it's true what you're saying, Ben. Yes, this was kind of a royal fair. It was really brought there by the Altanis, the royal family of Qatar, who are, you know, among the many royal families in the region that are mounting these big state-led museums and getting them built very quickly and needing to fill them and wanting to like really increase their tourism and their economic standing and diversify their economies.

13:50So all of that's very true. And I don't know that this particular edition of Art Basel, Qatar would change my opinion of that because it was so heavily underwritten by the Qatari state just to make it happen. And so much of what was brought there was kind of in the interest of appealing to the Altani family. But at the same time, I do think that there is a growing collector class there that is rapidly developing, even within like the last two or three years. Just to paint that picture, I remember you saying that the Altani family was putting a lot on hold. Did they get an early viewing? Usually happens, right?

14:27Yeah, I wasn't privy to their early viewing, but I do know when I was at Abu Dhabi Art in Abu Dhabi last November, which is now going to be Freeze Abu Dhabi this November since they're now partnering. They had to like boot us out of our press view because the royals were coming and they just shut down the whole fair. So there is a much different protocol. They were like literally like get out now. So I do think that that happened, except that we just weren't affected by it. I have my own speculation that like we also just didn't have an itinerary before arriving like 24, 48 hours before arriving there.

14:58And I think it's because they were trying to finalize the like royal movements around the fair. Right. And you you said in your reporting that, yeah, dealers received a piece of white paper if the Shaco was interested or reserving something. What I've heard from multiple dealers is that there was a slowness to the start. Usually when you go to a Basel fair, you know, you're like immediately as a journalist, you're getting all these emails in your inbox. be like, we've sold this, we've sold this, we've sold this. And it's just like a big moment to make your case for the strength of the market or whatever the dealers want to really sing from the mountaintops at that time.

15:31But this one was very quiet, muted on the first day. People were like, yeah, yeah, cool, cool. We'll report sales later. And we still don't really have like a definitive sales report that came out of that. But what people did say is that they got like a little slip of paper if Qatar museums, which is helmed by the Sheikha Al-Mayas Zaltani if they were interested in acquiring that piece. And that kind of then set the tone. There was a sort of deferential thing where no one else was really making offers until Sheikha had made her selection. So it just kind of slowed the whole thing down. So like first right of refusal type of settled rules.

16:09Yeah. I find that super interesting because, you know, at a regular fair, as you mentioned, And the reason that those like sales come right out the gate as soon as a fair opens at 11 a.m. is because there's all these pre-sales made. And again, you know, I think this region has been very forward gazing, as we've already mentioned here. And this idea of kind of waiting and slow buying and seeing the work and considered buying is what it really sounds like is also quite encouraging. Well, as I was reading the coverage, what I really wanted to know is were people networking? That's what I wanted to know.

16:38Because in terms of seeding collectors, my feeling is that you can buy the artwork in advance at the Miami Fair, for instance, because it almost like just clears the decks for what the fair really is, which is where the social network of art that you're buying into, that is the real sales proposition of a lot of contemporary art, instantiates itself. and I think kind of what goes unspoken in some of the coverage of the Middle East is that it's hungry to plug into contemporary art or there's still appetite there to hug into contemporary art precisely because there's been like a certain standoffishness from a lot of the West and that is one of the functions of art is to patronize something that ingratiates you or connects you to other people.

17:28And so sort of thinking about what it means to seed a fair there, what really is going on here, what I'd be looking for is like, are people really having these like backroom conversations where they're like forming those social networks that are going to become the pathway for other things in their lives? I mean, I do think so. Yeah. When I was doing my reporting there, I was speaking to Ivan Wirth of Hauser & Wirth. And he said that eight out of 10 of the people that came by his booth on the first day were new to him. And this is one of the biggest dealers in the world, who you assume kind of knows everybody.

18:04He was saying a lot of them were from Dubai and that he hadn't been to Dubai in a long time, which I think kind of underscores the fact that there hasn't been a art fair in the region that would draw some of these bigger dealers, some of these bigger collectors for a long time, because there's been Art Dubai for 20 years, but it's been a much more like local affair. I mean, I think that he was very much interested in the kind of connections he could make this year, but he also left it kind of open-ended when I was speaking to him about like, I don't know where it goes from here. Like this year is interesting.

18:35I'm more curious to see what it means next year. Can I ask you, like, what were the parties like? Just to be really blunt about it. I mean, I feel like... I see. I see what kind of networking you're in for. Yeah, like what was like the Trois Rois of Qatar? It's called the Ned. And it's a really cool modernist hotel bar. And I would say that that is a notable difference just culturally in the Gulf, because obviously they have a much different relationship. Yeah, that's why I asked. That's why I asked, just to be clear. To alcohol than we do in the West. And so when you go to the official Art Basel parties, there were not alcoholic beverages.

19:14So then you'd have to go to an after party somewhere. I want to caveat and say that actually Art Basel did have like a sponsored nightcap event at the end of every night where you could go get alcohol. But it was, again, I think more in a hotel setting, which is generally where you're going to find alcohol. And so I would say everyone kind of gathered at the Ned. You'd bump into dealers and advisors and artists there every single night. It's a super cool place to hang out. They did keep getting my martini order wrong, but we got there in the end. that should have been in your reporting scandals I will say I received I asked for a gin martini with a twist I received a dirty martini with a piece of lemon in it and I was like what but again beggars can't be choosers I drank it and I think that you know it did kind of put a different tone on it I'm curious about what happens at other fairs that are going to be going on in the region because I think Abu Dhabi has more of a social scene than maybe Doha does.

20:16Doha is a much more like specific kind of place. It itself as a city feels very curated. Abu Dhabi feels a little bit more like, I don't know, it's got a little more social networking going on, a little more fun happening. You can find more parties in a lot of ways. And I think that that might set the tone maybe between like freeze Abu Dhabi and what we just saw at our Basel, Qatar, that might be a notable difference. Or if that changes over time with Art Basel Qatar, it becomes more established if there's more satellites and then more opportunities for these kinds of other sort of like off hours engagement rather than what's on the official fair program.

20:55So, you know, DropUp, what will you be looking to in the coming months and year as you continue to report on this region? Like, what are your big questions that you left with? Yes. There's so many questions, actually. And I think that's actually what makes the region so interesting. And the reason I think that this isn't like a one and done sort of like, oh, we tried it and now we can tick that box. I think that there's a lot happening there just in terms of the amount of museums that are being built, the amount of kind of new residencies that are popping up. I think the biggest question for me is how they're aiming to support more regional artists.

21:32And I know that that was a big focus of the first edition of Art Basel Katar had a kind of curator of it, which is a little unusual. That was artist Wael Shockey. And we had him on Art Market Minute for a minute, a minute, to talk about how he sees the market actually being able to support education and advancement of younger artists careers, even though they're not necessarily showing younger artists at fairs or at a fair like Art Basel. And I think that that's the most urgent need. But I also think that there's a lot to look at in terms of dismantling some preconceptions of the region. You know, one Saudi dealer did tell me that like there's this kind of idea in the West that the Gulf is very cash rich with little substance.

22:16And he really wants to see that narrative rewritten. He's like, yes, there's money here, but also there is a history here. There is a culture here. And just we're actively trying to build the infrastructure to preserve that and present that in new ways and make it sustainable. Yeah, on the note of artists, actually, we should move on because, you know, another story that we wanted to talk about today was focusing on the contemporary art world as per this witness of a return to art history, I guess we could call it. You know, there's been a shift and I don't really know when it began, but it became much more pronounced last year and is only intensified this year against the sort of backdrop of what we've now kind of all finally agreed on as a cooling market.

22:54Pre-war and historical works and artist estates are somehow the buzziest things going right now. You know, at Freeze London last year, our colleague Vivian Chow picked up on that and her piece about Freeze Masters, you know, that younger collectors are there and price accessibility is something that they're really interested in when it comes to like pre-modern art. Yeah, so I'm wondering what you guys are thinking about that, because it's ticking up. And I mean, I was at a dinner a few weeks ago, and someone I was talking to who works at Commercial Art Gallery with contemporary artists was saying that they, in their personal collection, were like offloading, quote unquote, living artists and interested in buying dead ones.

23:29So the sentiment feels increasingly common these days. Yeah. And there's an article on this site written by Cabell Ahn about the appeal of old master painting to ultra contemporary artists. That's new painters working with old master references that, I don't know, I thought plugged into what you're saying. And I've been telling people for a while, I would bet on the past. I'm suspicious of that impulse in myself because it's kind of such a thing to say, you know, like people don't respect the past enough. But it is the case that we are immersed in cheap images and exponentially more so. And the past is a finite resource.

24:18And I think ultimately prestige has to flow to the finite, you know? So in a context where there's just a lot of new stuff bidding for your attention, there is something grounding about looking to the past, I think. Maybe I speak only for myself. Yeah, I think, you know, Cabell's article brought up some really nice points, like looking at things that are true across centuries, you know, which sounds like a very noble endeavor for an artist, of course, to look for these kinds of fundamental truths. But on the other side of the coin, Maggie, you commissioned a story from Janelle Zara, this LA-based art critic who's a contributor to Artnet News, and she termed this idea of reference baiting and sort of critiques this.