A Crypto Billionaire's Lawsuit, Koons’s Hulk Blasts Back,' the Art Basel Awards

The Los Angeles–based trend forecaster and writer Sean Monahan is known for his sharp takes on the zeitgeist. Over the past decade, his cultural insights have routinely gone viral—most famously when he coined the term “vibe shift,” a phrase that quickly spread from niche corners of the internet to mainstream outlets like The New York Times and The Guardian. In the early 2010s, he co-founded the trend-forecasting collective K-HOLE with Greg Fong, Sean Monahan, Chris Sherron, Emily Segal, and Dena Yago. Though short-lived, their reports had an outsized influence on the cultural sphere, best known for popularizing the term “normcore”—a concept that began in the art world and ended up becoming a household world an era of anti-style. Today, Monahan runs 8Ball, his cult-favorite newsletter on Substack that decodes contemporary aesthetics, social dynamics, tech, and the subtle undercurrents of change. If you want to understand why things look, feel, and behave the way they do right now—his writing is essential. Senior Editor Kate Brown spoke with Sean about his own journey from art school to consulting for brands, and how that path informs his view of the present moment. They discussed institutional decay, the legacy of post-internet art, generational shifts, and the persistent sense that culture has entered a holding pattern. He also offered thoughts on why the 2020s—after several false starts—may finally be congealing into a definable decade.

We’re on the cusp of the 2025 edition of Art Basel—the flagship fair held each June in Basel, Switzerland. More than 200 galleries from around the world gather to present works spanning the 20th and 21st centuries. Art Basel is both a bellwether and a battleground. Participation is prestigious—and costly. It’s competitive, and it’s high-stakes. That’s always been true. What’s newer is the softening of the art market. Sales are down. Demand is cautious. Buying patterns are shifting. “Uncertainty” was the word last year—and it still is. Much of the focus tends to fall on the top of the market. But what about the emerging tier? The galleries selling works under $250,000 and $100,000? The ones spotting and raising new talent, pushing aesthetics forward? What does a “win” look like for them in this moment? What does growth mean now—and how do they survive in a contracting ecosystem? To unpack these questions, Senior Editor Kate Brown is joined by three dealers whose programs I’ve followed closely over the years. Their perspectives offer a real-time snapshot of what’s at stake. On the podcast with us is Robbie Fitzpatrick, of Fitzpatrick Gallery, a dealer who has operated galleries in Los Angeles and Paris, and who recently decided to take his gallery program nomadic. Robbie also founded Art Basel Social Club in 2022, an annual event that has become a defiant and central alternative during the week in Basel. This year, the edition is bigger than ever and takes place in a formidable location of a former bank in the center of the city. Kate is also joined by Lisa Offermann, founder of the gallery LC Queisser. Lisa opened the gallery in 2018 in Tbilisi, Georgia, and launched a second location in Cologne earlier this year. She’s participated in several editions of Art Basel and is part of its newest sector, Premiere, this year. Freddie Powell, founder of Ginny on Frederick, is also on the show—Freddie opened in London in 2020. With a sharp program and quick ascent, the gallery is making its debut at Art Basel this year, in both Basel and in Paris in the fall.

Have you ever asked yourself: What do artists have to learn from the octopus? Maybe not—but the question is at the heart of the work of Miriam Simun, who currently has an exhibition about her Institute for Transhumanist Cephalopod Evolution at the art space Recess in Brooklyn. And it turns out the answer is mind-expanding. Almost literally. Simun’s unusual art practice can be seen as part of a serious trend in recent years of artists exploring non-human thought of all kinds in the hopes of shifting our troubled relationship to the natural world. The centerpiece of Simun's show at Recess is a series of workshops titled “How to Become an Octopus (and sometime squid).” For these, the artist guides participants through a two-hour program of “psycho-physical” exercises she has developed over many years through collaborations with marine biologists, engineers, dancers, and synchronized swimmers. She’s taught the method all over the world, and the description says the classes are “open to anyone curious about cephalopods, new ways of sensing, and expanding the definition of self”—an audience which included me. Art Critic Ben Davis got in there to explore his cephalopod side, and for this week's Art Angle, he talks about Simun’s art and what he took away from his experience in her workshop.

It's been a minute, but we're back with our Round-Up episode, where we parse and discuss some of the biggest stories going on around the art world, and it's really good to be back into this format again after a little commercial break.  A lot has been happening lately in the so-called art world—good, bad, and there's been plenty of in-between that—but it remains as colorful, contradictory, and chaotic as ever.  We'll be diving into crypto collector Justin Sun’s escalating legal battle with Blue Chip Titan David Geffen over a long-nosed Giacometti sculpture; a trio of massive Hulk sculptures by Jeff Koons that descended on Frieze New York a couple of weeks ago—these big green bellwethers for the state of the market are in play; and finally, we'll look at some of the major developments at Art Basel, including the launch of its very first art award. Senior Editor Kate Brown is joined by co-host, art critic Ben Davis, and Artnet News Pro Editor Andrew Russeth.

There is nothing that Artnet’s Art Critic Ben Davis likes better than finding a name for a phenomenon that’s all around him, but that he doesn’t have a name for yet. The writer and theorist Nadia Asparouhova has a new book out that offered exactly this. It’s called Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading. We tend to think of cultural influence as being tied to popularity and visibility. What Asparouhova wants us to pay attention to is a whole other class of cultural stuff whose influence is linked instead to being hard to find or difficult to understand. These are what she calls “anti-memes.” It’s the opinion puts you at odds with some people but really connects you to others, so you’re careful how you share it. It’s the artwork that looks like nonsense to the majority of the audience but is full of intricate meaning to fans. The theory of "anti-memes” is about how some of our most intense cultural investments are below the radar—not because they haven’t been found yet, but because that’s how they are built. All this touches on themes that a lot of artists have been thinking about. Asparouhova’s book, in fact, is published by a group of artists and thinkers called the Dark Forest Collective, named after writer Yancey Strickler’s idea of the internet as a “dark forest,” a space that has become so contentious and commercial that the smart people retreat to more private digital spaces for authenticity and cachet. Asparouhova’s book helps focus in on the question of how difficult ideas and art that’s not built to go viral survive and find real fans now.

Spring art week just wrapped in New York City. Known for its extravagant floral displays and signature oysters and champagne, TEFAF is the fair with a vibe. This year, 91 exhibitors from 13 countries presented everything from antiquities to modern and contemporary art and design at the stately Park Avenue Armory. There’s a real sense of passion here— dealers are eager to share the stories behind their works. Which brings us to today’s episode, recorded live at the Thrill of the Chase panel with three very different cultural omnivores who personify Tefaf’s ethos which span centuries and styles. Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn‘s gallery Salon 94, has long blurred the lines between art and design. Housed in a Beaux-Arts townhouse on the Upper East Side she has presented everything from Rick Owens furniture to the recent Kennedy Yanko solo exhibitions. Adam Charlap Hyman, co-founder of Charlap Hyman & Herrero, brings a sweeping vision to interiors, furniture, architecture, and opera sets. He also curates, most recently Glass Subjects at R & Company which is currently on view. Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, Curator of Contemporary Design at the Cooper Hewitt, began her career in literature before turning to storytelling through objects. Her work explores symbolism, inclusion, and cultural memory. Together, they explore what makes an object irresistible. Is it beauty, rarity—or the story it tells? In this conversation, Artnet Studio's William Van Meter dig into the thrill of discovery, the elusive “X factor,” and how great objects help shape layered narratives.

Almost by definition, the frame of a picture is something that you are not supposed to notice. But if you go to the art galleries to look at paintings now, you might get a very different sense of what a frame can or even should do. Weird and wild frames that very much draw attention to themselves seem to be having a moment. Recently, Artnet writer and editor Katie White penned a piece titled Bordercore: Why Frames Became the New Frontier in Contemporary Art. In her essay, she looks both at the history of framing styles, and talks to a number of contemporary painters to figure out what is causing so many to treat something that was literally considered peripheral to what they do as very much part of the main attraction. This week she joins Art Critic Ben Davis on the podcast to discuss this new frontier in art.

Kent Monkman is one of the most vital and provocative voices in contemporary painting. Based between Toronto and New York, and a member of the Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory, Monkman is known for his epic, genre-bending canvases that challenge dominant historical narratives and reframe them through Indigenous and queer perspectives. Monkman has developed a distinctive visual language that subverts classical European art traditions—particularly those of 19th-century and 20th-century history painting—to expose the distortions and omissions of colonial narratives. His work blends these European conventions with Indigenous histories, recontextualizing colonization while exploring themes of resilience, sexuality, joy, and identity. At the center of many of these works is Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, Monkman’s time-traveling alter ego. Clad in high heels, Miss Chief operates as both a trickster figure and a witness to colonial encounters, embodying Indigenous worldviews and queering history in a way that destabilizes settler-colonial perspectives. Through Miss Chief, Monkman reimagines historical events, placing Indigenous presence and agency at the forefront. Monkman’s large-scale commissions include mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People), a pair of monumental paintings created for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2019, which directly confronted the institution’s colonial legacies. His work has been exhibited in major museums across North America and Europe, and is part of significant public and private collections. As his first major U.S. museum exhibition, "History is Painted by the Victors," opens at the Denver Art Museum, Monkman joined me to reflect on the road to this moment—a journey that spans decades of challenging entrenched narratives in Western art history. We spoke about how growing up in Winnipeg, amidst the complexities of Indigenous representation in Canadian institutions, shaped his relationship to museums; how painting serves as both a political tool and a personal method for processing historical trauma; and the collaborative energy that fuels his expansive studio practice.

This week we are running a re-air of an interview with the curator and writer Elisa Auther about the fascinating history of fiber art and its recent rise. The show we mentioned in the episode, woven histories, textiles and modern abstraction has arrived at the Museum of Modern Art in New York this week. And I think Auther's perspective makes a nice compliment to that important show. Contemporary art comes in many shapes and forms, but close your eyes and think of what an artist looks like and nine times out of 10, I bet you are still thinking of a painter in front of a canvas. If recent interest for museums and galleries is any indication, however, that image should be joined by another one: the fiber artist. Think of a weaver seated at the loom or a quilt-maker laboriously stitching together layers of fabric. The textile arts have experienced a quiet but steady groundswell of interest in the last decades, and recently I've noticed that it feels as if it is kicked into a new, even higher level, from the many kinds of textile based art throughout the most recent Venice Biennale to the major show "Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction," which is on a tour of some of North America's most important museums right now. As many textile scholars will tell you, tapestry was once as exalted as painting as an art form, and it may be so again. This surge of interest is bringing new audiences, new histories, and new vocabularies into the center of the action that are worth getting familiar with, and to unravel all the different threads, Art Critic Ben Davis turned to Elissa Auther, a scholar who looked at the tangled history of fiber art in her book String Felt, Thread: The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art.  More importantly, she's been closely observing and encouraging the contemporary boom in textile art as the chief curator at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. This week she the podcast to discuss what's behind the resurgence of interest in this medium.

To say that the last few months have been chaos in the United States would most definitely be an understatement. Since Donald J. Trump's return to office in January, an angry culture war, divisive policies, and a seemingly endless barrage of executive orders has become the new normal. His office has sought to upend the relationship of government to culture, with no signs of slowing down. From cancelling humanities grants to fund a "heroes" sculpture garden, to calling for the decimation of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, to personally making himself the boss of the Kennedy Center, and shuttering DEI offices across the country, Trump is on a mission to upend the cultural landscape as we know it. It is very hard to keep up with the onslaught of changes, but one person who has is art critic and journalist Brian Boucher, who has written story after story for Artnet about the unfolding events. As we approach the end of Trump’s first 100 days at the end of this month, we asked Boucher to join us on the Art Angle podcast to discuss how this administration has, and will continue to enact changes that put the arts at serious risk.