Artspeak After Social Media - Journal #155
Ben Davis on Bianca Bosker’s 2024 book Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists & Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See.
Should the role of art writing be to make art clear to the masses? A persistent strain of art commentary believes in this mission, investing it with quasi-populist political value. We must, this line of argument goes, clear away the jargon of elitist gatekeepers to speak plainly to The People. I’m half-sympathetic to this—but only half. An era like ours, where the right-wing culture war against “liberal elites” combines with the Big Tech domination of media that turns everything into “content,” demands careful thinking about what the stakes of “aesthetic populism” really are. A handy case…
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