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Goodbye (for now!) from SEEN, Vulture’s Pop-Up Art Magazine

Andy Warhol (1928–1987), Before and After [4], 1962. Photo: Robert Gerhardt and Denis Y. Suspitsyn/© Whitney Museum of American Art

Wow, has it been 47 days already?

Don’t worry, art coverage will continue on Vulture, and in the print mothership, New York. But maybe not at such a furious pace. Big thanks to Whitney Mallett, my colleague in this project, writing and editing and finding all sorts of amazing writers from all over the world. But of course none of this could have happened without our critic, coach, head cheerleader and presiding spirit, Jerry Saltz. Did you read his epic how-to piece on 33 Rules for becoming an artist?

We had 27 artists including Mickalene Thomas, Raúl de Nieves, and John Waters share with Jerry the best and worst advice they ever got, and from whom.

We met with established artists: Francesco Clemente, who worried that New York is too safe a place these days to produce very good art; Ron Athey, who has aged out of putting things in his butt onstage; Peter Halley, who reminded us that the 1980s were no party; emailed with Judy Chicago, on how she’d wanted to become a pyrotechnician but was sexually harassed by the guy teaching her; and returned, with Christo, to those Miami islands he wrapped in plastic 35 years ago. We interviewed Catherine Opie, who made a bleak film; Banu Cennetoğlu, who made a very long film; Julian Schnabel, who made a film about van Gogh; and Lyle Ashton Harris, who had thoughts about the film Black Panther.

And we got to know some not-yet-famous artists, including: Sable Elyse Smith, Ebony G. Patterson, Ryan McNamara, Zoe Crosher, Hiba Ali, Nicole Wittenberg, Kayode Ojo, Kevin Beasley, Eva LeWitt, Matthew Leifheit, Anna Uddenberg, Rose Nestler, Jillian Mayer, Omar Victor Diop, Anna Maria Maiolino, and Jake Kean Mayman.

We went to a “retrospective” for emerging artists in Bushwick and reconsidered Andy Warhol on the occasion of that Whitney retrospective.

We had dispatches from Baltimore, Miami, Singapore, Shanghai, Dallas, Toronto, Puerto Rico, and Queens, and looked into whether you’d be better off quitting the art-world rat race in New York or L.A. and moving back to your hometown to start a gallery (with ten case studies of people who did just that.) From Detroit, we had an update on the future of the Heidelberg project, now that it is being removed from its ramshackle historical home as that city gentrifies.

We recalled how cheap pre-gentrified New York was in late ’60s, with a price list from Paula Cooper’s first show, and how hard it is to make creative things happen here today now that even Bushwick is gentrified, with a report on the shutting down of Signal gallery.

We got invited to few parties, including the Hirshhorn gala, the Gregor Hildebrandt after-party; and got ourselves on the list to the Art Basel Miami Beach Prada VIP club.

We found out that Alexander Calder and Ellsworth Kelly were pals and that Georgia O’Keeffe did her best to thwart her sisters’ artistic ambitions; and remembered Oksana Shachko, the groundbreaking FEMEN artist who took her own life.

Shortly before the midterms, we asked if the art world had any real political influence after all. We scrutinized the politics of a show about the black model in art history; weighed whether the NYC Gay Liberation monument whitewashed queer history; suggested strategies to #brownupyourgallery; asked if blockchain would just turn the art world into a commodities market; and wondered if it was possible to quit Instagram and still be a successful artist.

Anyway, it’s all here.

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Goodbye (for now!) from SEEN, Vulture’s Pop-Up Art Magazine