Bookforum's Demise, Artforum's Fate
And, in happier news, K8 Hardy's "Outfitumentary"
I didn’t want to write about the Artforum sale this week; I wanted to give things time to play out. But on Monday the corporate spirit of holiday cheer gave us the episode’s first inflection point: Bookforum got the ax. The publication had gone conspicuously unmentioned in the Penske Media Corp. press release announcing AF’s takeover, so its fate had been immediately clear if you were reading between the lines. Guess what: unless my invitation got lost in the mail, there ain’t gonna be any Artforum holiday party either.
The social-media eulogies for Bookforum this week have put me in mind of what I always think when a person dies: it would have been nice for them to hear how you felt while they were still around. Fortunately in this case the people are around. Tell them how much the magazine meant to you, buy them a meal or a drink. I’ll miss having it pile up on my coffee table, having them ignore my pitches with the most eloquent of stony silences. The fact that my sadness is overcoming my pettiness means we have truly lost an institution.
What’s surprised me is that the news of Artforum sale’s was, by contrast, greeted more or less with crickets. We need crisp outlines and bold colors to grab our attention, I suppose; a financial transaction isn’t quite drama enough. But you may as well skip a step or two in Kubler-Ross’s five stages because Artforum’s ultimate disposition will be no better than Bookforum’s. The only difference will be that its demise will be of the walking-dead variety. Get ready for the venerable blocky logotype to appear as a tag for clickbait at the tale end of stories in RobbReport and Sportico.
Get ready, too, for the merger with Penske’s two other art publications, Art in America and the insipidly capitalized ARTNews. Do you really need a troika of art magazines in your portfolio? Who needs three staffs when you could be paying only one? I’m no W. R. Hearst, but a consolidation would seem like pretty basic business. It’s even possible that that the very name Artforum gets lobbed into the ashcan of history. If PMC decides to hang on to just one title, I fear it will be ARTNews, in the belief that in this marketplace, the word news sells.
I suppose it is possible that Penske might actually want to keep AF “editorially independent,” as promised in its press release. (If you’ve worked at magazines, this sort of guarantee is uncomfortably familiar.) The point of such a hypothetical siloing would be for the title to maintain sufficient cachet to preserve its connections to luxury brands, a category into which I would lump Gagosian, Zwirner, et al. Such desirable advertisers would appear less well disposed to the company’s otherwise unchic holdings. Perhaps Penske will even fit out its new show horse and mount it in pursuit of the fata morgana of a Conde Nast–style art magazine. Various parties have gone after the vision of a Vanity Fair of art over the years. If it were viable, I suspect Conde would have done it by now.
In any case, it seems unlikely that Penske will care very much about galleries lower in the pecking order than Hauser und Wirth, whether you’re talking about either the lesser tiers’ relatively meager ad dollars or the multiplicity of art good and bad that they promote. Say what you want about Artforum, but I’m of the opinion that it’s helped prop up the middle class of galleries, a category that’s facing extinction in the art world like everywhere else.
Apologies to the sage on Twitter who recently noted that we’re living through the Can-a-rich-guy-bail-us-out? stage of capitalism, but it does seem a little odd to me that some wealthy patron of the arts could not be found to at least make Artforum shitty in some idiosyncratic way. Better die a creature of the art world and its vanities than stagger on a pale poseur from the gloomy thicket of print-mag has-beens and mid-tier trade pubs. Could PMC really pay that much more than your average MoMA board member? When rumors started to circulate this fall about the magazine’s possible sale, a friend suggested we start a GoFundMe: “Let’s Buy Artforum . . . Just in Case.” Is it too late?
I hope I’m wrong about all my doomsaying, of course. (Also I hope that the new regime does not read Spigot—I have a piece in the AF editorial pipeline.) But I rather suspect that the magazine will slowly dissipate, drip drip drip. A resignation here, a layoff there, a name change over the lintel. The square becomes another lousy rectangle. And then one day you’ll just look up and think, Oh yeah, Artforum, where did that go?
Postscripts
For those of you who’ve written for Artforum and Bookforum, make sure that you have a full set of PDF clips ASAP, and if you don’t, hit the archives. I lost a ton of work when Modern Painters blackholed and I would hate for such a thing to happen to anyone else.
Also, if Spigot readers know any current or former staffers of Variety, WWD, etc. who would be willing to chat about their experience before and after those properties’ purchase, send them my direction, not necessarily for publication.
Film
If you’re in the New York metro region, go see K8 Hardy’s Outfitumentary at Metrograph this weekend, December 16 and 17. I attended its premiere in a busted-up Chinese restaurant in 2016 (yes, the one under Reena Spaulings) and have in intervening years wondered why the movie isn’t more famous. It’s a lesson in artistic economy and just a fucking good idea. It might actually be, dare I say, a lasting and important work of art.
In the film, Hardy triangulates post-conceptualism, the nascent spirit of autofiction, and the Warholian faith that everyone can be a superstar as she documents her ensemble day after day from 2001 to 2012. The simple setup becomes absorbing viewing thanks to Hardy’s stage presence and the visual appeal of checking a modish person’s daily fit. At the same time, the movie gives you a puzzle to solve: you’re invited to delve into the depthless mystery of another human being, gleaning what you can from the protagonist’s shifting personas and moods while likewise searching the environs for signs of the passing times. In a strange way, the experience is like looking at a media corporation’s news release—there’s a lot for the discerning to read between the lines.
Somewhere I have a video of K8 dancing alone in front of the room as the post-premiere party winded down, having a good time but performing all the same. Too perfect, a witty extension of the film we had all just seen, unselfconscious but hardly unaware. I wish I could remember what she was wearing.