The Round-Up: Johnny Depp Does Modigliani, Labubu Mania, and a Weird Idea for the Venice Biennale
It may be the dog days of summer, but the art world doesn’t take a break, and there’s plenty to talk about for our monthly roundup episode, where we parse and analyze the biggest headlines shaping the art world and industry. In this episode, we take a look at what is going on in the art scenes across London, New York, and Berlin, including some of the biennials going on this summer. Then, we get into the headlines: including a dive into a long-gestating biopic by actor Johnny Depp, called Modì: Three Days on the Wing of Madness. The new film is Depp's first directorial effort in nearly three decades, and it dramatizes 72 chaotic hours in the artist Amedeo Modigliani’s life as he chases around early 20th-century Paris with artists Chaim Soutine and Maurice Utrillo. We also talk about Depp's new art drop. Is it all a rebranding exercise?
After that, we break down the intrigue swirling around the U.S. pavilion for next year’s Venice Biennale and what it might reveal about American cultural diplomacy in 2025. Within that fold, we take stock of a proposal from controversy-loving artist Andres Serrano and another idea from far-right American blogger Curtis Yarvin. Last but not least, we analyze the Labubu mania, a craze for these mischievous little dolls that has finally made its way into the art world and into the market.
National art critic Ben Davis and our editor-in-chief, Naomi Rea joined senior editor Kate Brown on the podcast to talk about it all.
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There Is Not One Art World. There Are (at Least) Five
If you’ve been around art in the last several decades or so, you likely have heard the term “institutional critique.” This is a genre of art that turns the lens back onto the world around the art object as its subject, finding playful or polemical ways to provoke thought on art’s unspoken rules and expectations and links to the wider world.
Andrea Fraser is one of the artists who has most helped define “institutional critique” as a genre and as a practice. She has done this in artworks that sometimes look like performances, or lectures, or works of research—but also in her essays and theoretical writings.
One of her recent essays, “The Field of Contemporary Art: A Diagram,” published over at e-Flux Notes, is an attempt literally to map out how contemporary art is not one thing but a landscape of different competing camps and value systems, so that you might figure out where you stand within it. She calls this theory “a resource to make sense of a field that makes no sense,” and she agreed to talk to art critic Ben Davis about it.
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Why No One Trusts Art Prices Anymore
What’s a painting worth? For art world professionals, that question of price has never been easy—but lately, it’s gotten harder than ever.
As we’ve discussed on this podcast before, the art market has cooled off. But this isn’t just a downturn—it’s a disruption. The system that once supported pricing logic is now in disarray, and dealers and advisors are feeling the strain.
In a recent report for Artnet News Pro, our editor-in-chief Naomi Rea explored how the traditional rules of art pricing have stopped making sense. With confidence waning and speculation drying up, dealers are quietly recalibrating. What we’re seeing may be more than a correction—as Naomi reports, it could be the unraveling of an entire logic.
Naomi joins senior editor Kate Brown to unpack what’s going on in the “danger zone” of the market and how different players—from mega-galleries, emerging dealers, to advisors and collectors—are adapting. They also discuss whether we might be heading toward a more sustainable and meaningful art market.
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How the Post-Pandemic Generation Is Changing Digital Art
Every rising generation reinvents the rules of how art works. What are the new new ways of working? What kinds of spaces serve those needs? Art critic Ben Davis keeps coming back to these questions, and it’s part of why he decided he wanted to talk to Maya Man.
Man got her MFA from the famous Media Art program at the University of California in 2023. She makes art that’s fun and very online, looking at the digital world and the way it blurs reality and performance. Right now, her work A Realistic Day in My Life Living in New York City is the first-ever work commissioned by the Whitney Museum for its “On the Hour” program, taking over the museum’s website every hour for 30 seconds. Set your clock if you want to catch it.
Man is also a scene-maker herself. Davis first heard about her experimental art space, Heart, after it had already closed, earlier this year. But in its brief, frenzied life, it left a big mark. It was a space where a certain kind of experimental online/offline art scene that feels very now started to define itself.
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Why Does Culture Feel Stuck?
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.
A weekly podcast that brings the biggest stories in the art world down to earth. Go inside the newsroom of the art industry's most-read media outlet, Artnet News, for an in-depth view of what matters most in museums, the market, and much more.
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