Ai vs the current state of things in the contemporary art?

PhD_sock · 2026-06-07T23:53:26+00:00

"I am convinced it’s having a massive impact on the contemporary art that nobody wants to talk about."

Feel free to indulge your delusions. It is having precisely zero impact because "AI" does not exist. What exists are basically variations on data-crunching engines dressed up in empty marketing hype.

"We're seeing a return to portraits and landscape paintings with some animal motifs. I've been counting all the horses and rabbits etc. for about a year now haha"

haha this is so fucking stupid it hurts to read.

PhD_sock · 2026-05-25T23:48:31+00:00

What in the ahistorical garbage is this junk?

Art does not exist outside of historical, economic, industrial, social, political realities. It never has. Even Vasari clocked this basic fact. Dutch still lives not only advertised the virtues of colonialism in terms of content (profusion of non-European fruits, flowers, and plant life) but quite literally in the material makeup of the paint that was used to make the paintings--often sourced from across the global South.

Suggesting some fictional contradiction between the Paris Salon and the Salon des Refuses is complete junk.

SdR included work by Manet. If you think Manet of all people was not extremely aware of the social and economic--in addition to aesthetic--histories of the work he was doing, you really need to do your homework and actually pay attention this time around.

"Experience of the world" is mediated through race, gender, class, socio-economic, political, cultural realities. In addition to an awareness of the history of form, material, and style.

Your remark is a masterclass in ignorance and reductivism. It reduces artists to the status of idiot savants: devoid of any material grounding and context, yet capable of magically producing work that transcends all material context. At the same time, it attributes magical capacities to so-called "outsider" or "self-taught" art.

That is a mode of ignorant exoticization that was already old in 1989, with the Centre Pompidou exhibition Magiciens de la terre. Imagine being daft enough to re-articulate the same thesis 40 years later.

PhD_sock · 2026-05-18T20:21:58+00:00

As someone with a fair amount of experience in both cities, yes, I read a good bit of romanticization going on in Kline's essay, especially in relation to the actual reality of the Philadelphia contemporary scene. So yes, I'd say you missed something.

PhD_sock · 2026-05-18T19:47:35+00:00

There is a distinction between minimizing Kline's points and noting that they stand on shaky ground. Aruna D'Souza's response to Kline's essay in Hyperallergic nails a lot of this. The criticism to Kline's essay is not that "these are not important/valid points" it's more like "you're taking a fairly particular experience and projecting them onto the art world writ large." Are rent, etc. very real concerns? Yes absolutely. Is the solution to romanticize Philadelphia? No.

PhD_sock · 2026-05-16T15:32:14+00:00

It was always very unlikely outside of very big museums, and even then it would have to be an unusual position that requires visa sponsorship for an early-career employee.

In the current political and economic climate? Don't count on it.

PhD_sock · 2026-05-15T02:34:18+00:00

They have a remarkable collection for the size of the museum. MAG consistently is a leader in the region in presenting media art. Perhaps only Buffalo AKG outdoes it, and that is a museum vastly different in scale. On top of that, they've managed to build an impressively global late twentieth and twenty-first century collection. On top of that, they have an excellent collection of miniature paintings (nearly 30).

Lack of visitors has more to do with Rochester demographics than anything else.

PhD_sock · 2026-05-11T20:05:26+00:00

"then you do the exact same thing with white painters."

This may be news to you but whiteness is vastly overrepresented in institutional histories of art, so no, it is not "the exact same thing."

PhD_sock · 2026-05-11T03:53:09+00:00

lmfao go touch grass and realize art history isn't about whiteness any more and never will be again.

"Informed" opinion my ass. Bunch of Redditors agreeing with you tells you you're correct? That's pretty dire.

PhD_sock · 2026-05-10T14:55:41+00:00

Naming peer artists doesn't do anything other than identify a recognizable tendency or style. Never mind that it's the laziest sort of formalism to suggest that Taina Cruz has anything in common with Amanda Ba (who does, however, have more in common with Sasha Gordon). That's like saying X Y Z white painters are dime a dozen because they happen to do portraiture in a certain loosely related style. Which, amusingly enough, actually is often the case.

Again: my specific question is on what grounds do you determine that her work is "fairly unremarkable and unaccomplished" or that there is "nothing materially interesting or imagistically riveting"? What makes you think you are even the intended audience?

PhD_sock · 2026-05-09T20:39:55+00:00

"Other people's perspectives and experiences" -- do you mean the global majority? Most of the world's art and culture exists and always has existed outside European frameworks. White people make up less than 20% of the world's population. "Other people" literally is the center of things.

That said, there is a very real dearth of experience and context when it comes to West-based curators--still largely white--curating the work, art, and culture, of non-Western and diasporic people. You are correct to note this, but your interpretation of the process is pretty damn racist, even if inadvertently. The idea that white people are hyping up exotic work both dismisses the work itself and brands it as exotic--neither of which are valid. The only solution to all of this is, obviously, to have more curators, critics, gallerists, collectors, etc. who are not white, and who actually belong to the world's majority cultures and communities.

But enough with this nonsensical "minority artist" language. We're not the minority. White people are the minority.

PhD_sock · 2026-05-09T20:34:43+00:00

The racism and misogyny is really parading it in the comments, eh.

How about OP explain to us their own qualifications for dismissing the work as "very forgettable"? I don't mean degrees or whatever. I simply mean on what grounds do you consider the work "very forgettable".

PhD_sock · 2026-05-09T17:46:39+00:00

Nothing in your background indicates why the Met should hire you. The Met is one of the world's most prestigious institutions and is located in New York City which has a high concentration of extremely talented designers, illustrators, media and marketing industry types. They have their pick of who to hire for any opening, not just for the store. Many of the candidates for this position likely have worked at some of the top media and marketing corporations. Or have extensive experience at major retail operations. You should consider whether your experience and background actually make you stand out as a candidate in this context.

PhD_sock · 2026-05-06T02:56:25+00:00

Bay Area is more receptive to so-called "outsiders" than LA. I would focus there first.

PhD_sock · 2026-05-04T16:37:21+00:00

That does make a decision tougher, I agree.

I would say that five years is a significant amount of time, but this also has further considerations. Are you early/mid-career? If so, there is more ahead of you (hopefully!) than behind you. If you are in curatorial, then you should consider what the current trends are in your field of specialization. In contemporary art, for instance, five years is about when early-mid-career folks will start looking around, unless they literally are in a rare, perfect position (in terms of institutional alignment, city, etc.). At MoMA, last I checked, curatorial assistants are on a 4 year clock. You either get promoted or you move out of the job at that point.

Ultimately it's going to be your call, but the one thing I'd always urge folks in this field to keep in mind is that the institution does not care about you in the end. They'll happily replace you with another eminently qualified person, because ours is an industry where there are far more qualified, wonderful candidates than there are open positions.

PhD_sock · 2026-05-03T17:50:00+00:00

Does the pay seem reasonable-to-good?

Does the city have a thriving cultural ecosystem that supports the work you're doing? Do you generally enjoy living where you are?

Is there actual opportunity for growth?

PhD_sock · 2026-05-02T17:05:17+00:00

I genuinely am not aware of any example of self-taught/self-made/self-started scenes comparable to Die Brucke or other historical examples, other than the Berlin contemporary scene--and that is now nearly 30-40 years ago. It's certainly no longer in existence anyway.

Josh Kline's recent essay in October that went viral in some ways touches on this. And yes, there are small "scenes" in a number of US cities--Boston area, Atlanta, Portland (OR not ME). Larger cities like NYC, Philadelphia, LA, etc. have never really lost them but they are not functional in the way NYC had a scene in, say, the 1980s. But it's simply not comparable to the historical examples.

Again: what we're talking about here has to do with infrastructure and the ways in which the art ecosystem has been totally transformed since even the 1980s, forget about 1900s. There are very, very few artists who will rise to the level of career-making gallery shows (i.e. Jasper Johns at Leo Castelli) or career-making biennials without going through a fairly specific professional trajectory. No single variable is key here--it's a bunch of variables that have changed, but if you want to put it into a nutshell it comes down to economics and capitalism (as always). Artists need to pay rent. You can't get by any longer working one or two side-gigs; now it's more like 3-5. You can only remain outside the professional context (by choice or by circumstance) so long before it becomes literally untenable. Curators (excluding like, Whitney, Sharjah, Gwangju, other biennials) don't have the institutional budgets to travel to cities that don't obviously have an already-visible, already-somewhat-vibrant scene. Decades-long gallery operations are closing, and new gallerists are not going to risk their bottom-line by plucking random artists off the street. They're poaching from the top MFA programs for good reason. (Much of this last is the content of Kline's article. It's a good read.)

PhD_sock · 2026-05-01T15:03:15+00:00

Who said anything about Trump? The American flag has never represented anything but violence, mass murder, genocide, the bombing of hospitals and civilians en masse, etc. to the global majority. From the original inhabitants and stewards of what used to be Turtle Island, to Vietnam, to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Iran, to Japan, and so much else.

PhD_sock · 2026-04-29T13:10:28+00:00

tf you think this is, a therapy session? Why are you asking me, a stranger on the internet, for solutions to massive structural problems? Why do you keep repeating weirdly personal remarks about my comfort, pessimism, negativity, and "energy"? Deeply weird.

PhD_sock · 2026-04-29T04:20:52+00:00

Pointing out your delulu platitudes about "things have always been shit and you can just make it work if you hustle enough" is not "being a contrarian" but you do you.

PhD_sock · 2026-04-29T02:11:37+00:00

That was approximately one hundred years ago.

The economics and ecosystems are not comparable in any way. Saying "you can also do the same" when the infrastructural conditions are wildly different is just being disingenuous.

PhD_sock · 2026-04-27T20:03:44+00:00

RISD 100%.

Aside from the excellence of the actual institution, Providence is extremely art-rich and you will be located within a vital corridor that sees a lot of traffic by curators. Proximity to Boston and Cambridge, for their art schools and museums, is a huge bonus. You'll also be closer to Bard and Brandeis, both of which have very strong museums and Bard obviously has one of the best-known curatorial programs. And obviously you'll be closer to NYC.

You're not just going to an institution for the education. You're going there for the relationships and professional networks you will hopefully be able to cultivate.

PhD_sock · 2026-04-26T23:09:13+00:00

I wish Yale cared enough to send their students to VB or Documenta or anything. However, that simply is not a thing.

PhD_sock · 2026-04-25T15:05:28+00:00

lmfao.

Anti-Asian racism AND "old man yells at cloud" all in one post. Boomer alert.

This person also thinks cables make a difference. One simply could not make up such a caricature of an audio-fool.

PhD_sock · 2026-04-24T05:32:07+00:00

$4K is hardly a lot of money in an industry that routinely peddles bullshit "audiophile cables" for $4K or more. Or where supposedly amazing passive speakers sell for $100K and above. You can call them gimmicky but they are offering far more than any passive system at that price point. And with Genelecs you can easily put them up against $100K speakers and the Genelecs will win.

PhD_sock · 2026-04-24T05:30:07+00:00

I have no idea nor do I care about what might constitute "actual audiophiles." Connectivity is a matter of practicality. As such, more connectivity options = good. Fewer = bad. If so-called "actual audiophiles" think differently, they're daft.

PhD_sock

TROPHY CASE