“The transformation from the established model of the Academy to an increasingly free-market system was slow and piecemeal.”
Published in 1996, Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art is still one of the basic books for understanding the making of the art market. Written by Picasso scholar Michael [...]

Cautionary Tales: Critical Curating. Edited by Steven Rand and Heather Kouris. New York: apexart, 2007. 128 pages. ISBN 9781933347103
By Shana Beth Mason
Less of a “how-to” guide on becoming, being and remaining a contemporary curator, the second edition of Cautionary Tales: Critical Curating is a lucid, plainly crafted text by such respected theorists and [...]

By John Valentine
Wabi-Sabi is a classic and well-known style of Japanese craftsmanship dating back at least as far as the 14th century. Unfortunately, its definition has become a cliché in the art world and its deeper philosophical dimensions are often overlooked or under-appreciated. The standard explanation is superficial at best: “A beauty [...]

By Jon Seals
There are nights that are so still
that I can hear the small owl calling
far off and a fox barking
miles away. It is then that I lie
in the lean hours awake listening
to the swell born somewhere in
the Atlantic
rising and falling, rising and falling
wave on wave on the long shore
by the village [...]

By Paco Barragán

Like Charles Dickens’ famous novel A Tale of Two Cities, the history of the contemporary art fair of the 1970s and 1980s can be explained by the extraordinary rivalry between Cologne and Basel. I will try to formulate here why ART COLOGNE, though being the first contemporary art fair, [...]

By Jason Hoelscher

Technologies become socially interesting only when they become technologically boring, to paraphrase NYU new media professor Clay Shirky. That is, people marvel at a new gadget when it debuts, because its rarity causes it to stand out. At that point it is technologically interesting but socially dull. It is only [...]

By Craig Drennen
Mid-December every year I convene with familiar art world veterans to hear about their favorite pieces from the Miami art fairs. And every year I’m told that the best thing seen was an obscure Picabia, a forgotten Fontana, or a newly available Alice Neel. In other words, within the froth [...]

A Conversation between Tim White-Sobieski and Hans Op de Beeck
Visual artists Tim White-Sobieski (USA) and Hans Op de Beeck (Belgium) have accepted ARTPULSE’s invitation to discuss their new media and film practices and the challenges of both current technology and the art market.

“We as artists have to find the way how to confront the state and capitalism.”
Santiago Sierra is Spain’s most well-known international artist. To some, his work is polemic; to others, it is pertinent, but it does not leave anyone indifferent. It reflects on the contradictions and paradoxes of the capitalist system, of which [...]

Tim Hadfield is a British artist, curator and writer who is a professor of media arts at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh, where he was the founding head of the department. He has exhibited widely in the United States and Europe. Hadfield has lectured at many renowned institutions, including Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Savannah [...]

Gregory Buchakjian is an interdisciplinary artist and art historian. He is director of the School of Visual Arts at Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA). His research and practice deal with Beirut and its history. From 2009 to 2016, he explored the city, collected vestiges and encountered passers-by, scholars and artists in a process that generated [...]