Anybody Want to Start an Art Magazine?

Plus vin-en-abymes, Alexandra Tatarsky, and a Blank Forms benefit

Artforum has imploded. The circumstances are more dramatic than I expected but also more helpfully definitive. In hindsight, it seems inevitable that David Velasco, whose tenure as editor in chief was marked by bold stands on political issues, would take a position that a corporate media owner would be too timid to endorse.

Now the the question is: what will take its place? Along with tales of artists being blackballed by collectors that are delivered in hushed tones at the beginning of the night and heatedly by the end of it—and yes, reprisals are really happening, folks—the topic of the post-Artforum critical universe has been implicit or explicit in most of the (extremely many) conversations I’ve had on the subject of Velasco’s firing in recent days.

Magazines are no longer curated collections of writing and pretty pictures, if they ever were. Rather, they’re cachet machines; they mine it out of social wattage like in-group crypto. That’s how they can remain a viable economic proposition today, in a fragmented environment hostile to print media on a legacy model. With Artforum’s cachet gone poof, the ad revenue that the magazine slurped in from galleries and luxury brands will gradually stop flowing into the coffers of PMC Media. It will await capture by some other enterprising souls. But who?

It’s possible no one will. It’s possible that galleries will realize that their audiences are so specific that magazine advertising is pointless for all but the big players on par with other luxury brands and that therefore no real trade rag of the peculiar sort Artforum was—that is, actually about art, not about artsy lifestyle or auction prices—will rise to take its place. In that scenario you end up in the anarcho-libertarian vision of contemporary media that we’re so often sold: Substacks and Discords on one end, Hauser and Gagosian’s glorified in-flight magazines on the other, and nothing in between.

All that free-floating cachet will still be out there, however, waiting to be snatched from the ether by some social-buzz Tesla. (The inventor, not the car.) Thus it’s more likely that a magazine or three will arise to fill at least part of the AF-shaped void. Will the eventual winner be an underdog, a plucky upstart from the ranks of the myriad small journals that people remarkably continue to start? Every scene needs its cachet machine, and an issue launch is a great excuse to throw a party. Or will it be some investor who thinks they can sluice the Artforum ad money into its own similarly shaped trough, producing a kind of AF 2.0, something a little more with the times?

The problem is that whoever does pull off that maneuver is exceedingly unlikely to replicate Artforum’s peculiar formula whereby being smart could also be cool. Not just smart, but immersed in art and serious about it. The mag didn’t require features about collector’s country homes, or portraits of paint-smeared artists in their garrets. Through a mysterious alchemy specific to the art-market boom that the magazine surfed beginning around the turn of the century, Artforum used its chic to create a genre that bridged between academic writing about art and the mainstream. Whose idea this was and how exactly the particular bargain was struck between editors, publishers, and advertisers is a great mystery, a winding climb whose first steps were taken back in the days of Ingrid Sischy.

Despite its Velasco-led spotlight role in various advocacy efforts such as the campaigns against the Sacklers and Warren Kanders, Artforum’s importance had recently plateaued at a level a little below its peak. The art market has become so large and art itself so valuable, such a curious repository of surplus wealth precisely as fake as that of money, that it’s become its own source of validation. Cachet with snooty nerds and sensible-shoe curators still matters in some quarters, but increasingly the only measure of worth is sales, as in every other industry on the planet. This is all a big drag, as one interested in fighting any good fight has to swim in the eddies that capital creates amid its buffeting currents.

I’m well aware that this is all very blah blah blah and boo fucking hoo. But in the mean world of cultural criticism, Artforum was more or less unique in fostering that oft-derided in-between genre of contributions to writing about art by those who could thread the needle between the sclerotic prose of the academy, the facile ooh-ahhs of mainstream slicks, and the glib jabber of would-be “culture” magazines. This criticism stood in opposition to poptimism, a seemingly light-hearted and vaguely democratic concept whose ultimate servitude to the corporate marketplace makes it as hideous as its name.

One overlooked point in the Artforum story is that the magazine has for decades hired some of the very smartest people around and trained some of the unfortunate ones to be editors. (I include myself in the latter category though not in the former.) Those people and the people that would have followed in their footsteps will now have one less place to exercise their talents when there are few to begin with, and practically the only place for a exceptional editorial training in art or anything else is now defunct.

The pay was always extortionate, though; let’s not forget that.

Another of the less-prominent angles of the imbroglio is that, after the ousting of Velasco for espousing a position that’s been embraced by such radical leftists as the Financial Times, the majority of Americans, and depending on how technical you want to get about notions of “ceasefire” and “pause,” the president of the United Fucking States, is that Artforum joins two other major art publications in being freshly rudderless: the EICs of both Artnet News and The Art Newspaper resigned in late September/early October. Thus it’s a period of tumult not just at Artforum but across the board. Protect Andrew Durbin at all costs!

At last, the whole Wither critique? question so beloved by panel discussants has a material circumstance that will produce some real answers to it. Though Artforum isn’t literally gone, it might as well be. (Courage to those still inside who are plotting their escape routes. ) In hopes of ratifying its demise, a lot of people signed an “attestation” that they won’t write, click on, or masturbate to any PMC content in the future. I demurred, as I found its self-parodic legalese a refreshing bit of comedy in a dark situation nested within a gruesome one. I’m good with just telling PMC to fuck off here, in my own organ of record.

What replaces Artforum? The answer is obvious. Spigot accepts its new charge as the last bastion of art criticism. Want to start an art magazine? Let’s talk.

Wine

Labbé Vin de Savoie Abymes 2021. Peering into the abyss a little too much these days? Join the club—and blot out your consciousness with the perfect refreshment for the occasion, Vin de Savoie Abymes.

The wine’s sinister name is curious, since it’s in fact the product of the Alps rather than some crevasse, and its spirit is fittingly ethereal. The grape is Jacquère, which expresses itself like a Riesling but drier and ever-so-slightly aromatic. Vin de Savoie Abymes is hair-raisingly acidic, like the runoff from a mountain spring running through a lemon grove, however topographically unlikely that may be. There’s a splinter of caramel in there as well, so imagine the grove down the road from a candy shop if you like, just close enough so you can persuade yourself you smell the burning sugar, a little smoke, apropos to something infernal.

Theater

Sad Boys in Harpy Land
Playwrights Horizons Theater
New York
Through November 26
Tickets

Alexandra Tatarsky in Sad Boys in Harpy Land. Courtesy Playwrights Horizons

I’m not prone to exaggeration so believe me when I say Alex Tatarsky is one of the best performers of her generation. She’s also a more talented writer than me (check out her essay on the current show here), so I can’t sum up her mildly berserk one-woman show Sad Boys in Harpy Land better than she does it herself—“a semi-autobiographical tour-de-farce, as told by a young Jewish woman who thinks she is a small German boy who thinks he is a tree.” It’s about depression, the void, the weird interpenetrability of life and literature, and the inseparability of the present from the past. As a trained clown, Tatarsky is in touch with both the vulgar and profound. Don’t let one seat of these shows go unsold.

Events

Blank Forms Gala Afterparty
Angel Orensanz Foundation
New York
Wednesday, November 8
9:30 pm
Tickets

If you want to try to be less depressed for a few hours while also doing something good for art, come to the Blank Forms benefit gala afterparty on Wednesday, November 8. Yes, it costs $75 $100, but you get free drinks (Rèmy Martin—get yakked!) and music by Douglas Sherman of the legendary Loft. Moreover, you’ll be supporting one of the only truly vital cultural outfits I can think of. I’m one of the party’s hosts—another career goal unlocked—so come out, say hi, and I’ll save a dance for you.

And if you can’t afford the full admission fee now that we’re past the early-bird pricing stage, write me—I might be able to work something out ;-)