by There are few more self-congratulatory terms in the world of journalism than “deep dive”, but Bianca Bosker has earned the right to get those two words tattooed on any body part of her choosing. She doesn’t sit and refine her material as much as she dives head first, breaking down closed ecosystems that she doesn’t want to be associated with, and emerging as an expert. In her Cork Dork debut in 2017, Bosker was brave enough to infiltrate the realm of wine snobs and attempt to pass the incredibly difficult sommelier test (spoiler alert: she passed). The latest in New Yorkers’ fascination – and frustration – is the contemporary art scene, a micro-society of uber-cool galleries, uber-wealthy collectors, and an endless stream of artists and sad sacks trying to release their Seesaw apps. and trying to open 15 gallery openings in one Thursday night.
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“It took over my life,” is how she describes the process of reporting Get The Picture, her hilariously witty account of years working as a gallery girl, studio assistant, and guard at the Guggenheim museum. “I don’t think I had any idea at the beginning how long it would take my life in charge, or how long it would take my life.” Part of the problem was getting access. “I felt like an FBI agent showing up for a job interview with the crowd,” she says of her efforts to win over art world sources. The message she was hearing was: back off. There were even threats. “They didn’t come right and put my safety or anything at risk,” says Bosker. “But my reputation, my interest and my career as a journalist – that’s another story.” When several people found her project very enjoyable, they indicated that if she succeeded in it, they would like every word they read.
Their concerns make some sense. As Bosker’s book outlines, the art world relies on a web of secrecy to protect the social and economic capital of a select few, and to justify astronomical price tags. “These gates become much more important if we’re told that we can’t understand art without spending years at art fairs, getting a master’s degree, memorizing artists’ encyclopedias and wearing the right jeans,” says Bosker.
While studying the bat signs and arguments of the art world, she began to gather friends and learn to speak their language. Not that it was easy. Although her inquiries were completely innocent, few would provide direct answers. Instead, her curiosity was criticized, even by those who agreed to spend time with her. She asked too many questions. Her clothes were too boring. Her emails were too long and made her sound too unimportant. His resting face was completely hopeless.
In her book, she is keen to break down the strange codes and customs of the contemporary art world – why, for example, it is perfectly fine to call something “beautiful” or why gallerists must say that They “supplied” a painting instead of advertising it. that they sold it? “Artspeak is an exclusive code where every word has to be bigger than it should be,” she explains. “The more syllables the better. There’s this complicated way of discussing everything, and in a voice that lets you know you’re running out of batteries.” If you read an artist statement and wonder why it doesn’t sound like normal English, Bosker has a theory for you: she posits that Artspeak emerged in the 1970s when critics wanted to imitate the essays of French academics which was playfully translated.
But she didn’t intend to make fun of a society that somehow looks like an espresso-added punchline. Growing up, she was a talented artist and even considered becoming an artist before she got swept up in getting A’s in college. Now 37 years old, she wanted to find out about a basic joy that she lost along the way. Every time she went to look at art, her eyes were drawn towards the wall text. She felt that she was missing out on the world of emotions and speech that was right before her eyes. “I felt like I had really realized something vital to my humanity,” she says.
Her determination prevailed and she talked her way into shadowing insiders, painting gallery walls, stretching canvases, and hosting parties. She spent time with an edgy gallery, a pair of slightly less edgy galleries, and museum guards. She got lost in the drift for a week at the Miami Art Fair (where she cosplayed as a gallery associate and made a ton of sales). She also apprenticed with artist Julie Curtiss and Mandy allFIRE, an internet-famous performance artist whose work involves grooming her derriere and sitting on things and people (Bosker won her over at a Gowanus event when she let she for the artist to relax her pneumatic body. top of her).
The more time Bosker spent reporting, the clearer it became that when people talked about art, they were often talking about everything but the work itself. In a world where a painting can sell for $1,200 but be auctioned two years later for $600,000, context is king. As Bosker breaks it down to his reader, this means when an artist went to grade school, with whom they are friends, where they had previously shown their work, they called it a “studio visit” (whatever means that), they all come. into playing.
“I had a gallery take someone’s work to me by being like, oh, like he’s sleeping with a much more famous artist,” Bosker recalls. “There’s this implication that maybe you can’t understand a piece unless you’ve spent, you know, years reading Clement Greenberg you know, stuck in art fairs, like, you know , and like memories, like the social networks on the Lower East Side. . As one gallery said to me if you don’t understand the context, you don’t understand what you’re looking at.”
Turned off by this message, she doubled down, working on educating herself. She wanted to understand how art is made, and train her eye to see things in new ways. “Spending time with artists in their studios and talking about their decisions showed me something different. That everything you need to have a meaningful experience with the art is right in front of you.”
Bosker’s book takes a side-eyed and wide-eyed approach. “I came away from this experience feeling like the velvet ropes and the tongue made up and the kind of deliberate mean streak,” she says. “Art can move us and stand on its own two feet, it can move us without secrecy and elaborate carving.”
These days, she says, she finds art in unlikely places—say, the sight of steam escaping from a sidewalk vent or a fleet of Mr. Softee ice cream trucks rushing by on a street corner. She is also more understanding as a writer, more patient and more careful. “Our brains are like trash compactors,” she says. “The way we perceive the world is about condensing information and compressing information. And I think looking at art is a training to take in the beauty and total chaos of the world around us.”
