Get the Picture
A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See
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15
A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See
Ratings3
Average rating3
An award-winning journalist obsessed with obsession, Bianca Bosker’s existence was upended when she wandered into the art world—and couldn’t look away. Intrigued by artists who hyperventilate around their favorite colors and art fiends who max out credit cards to show hunks of metal they think can change the world, Bosker grew fixated on understanding why art matters and how she—or any of us—could engage with it more deeply.
In Get the Picture, Bosker throws herself into the nerve center of art and the people who live for it: gallerists, collectors, curators, and, of course, artists themselves—the kind who work multiple jobs to afford their studios while scrabbling to get eyes on their art. As she stretches canvases until her fingers blister, talks her way into A-list parties full of billionaire collectors, has her face sat on by a nearly-naked performance artist, and forces herself to stare at a single sculpture for hours on end while working as a museum security guard, she discovers not only the inner workings of the art-canonization machine but also a more expansive way of living.
Probing everything from cave paintings to Instagram, and from the science of sight to the importance of beauty as it examines art’s role in our culture, our economy, and our hearts, Get the Picture is a rollicking adventure that will change the way you see forever.
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When I had hit chapter 7 of this book, I went back to the front page to check the title. The author calls her book a “mind-bending journey”, but halfway through the book, my mind was not only unbent, but actively bored. A full half of this book is dedicated to chronicling the author allowing herself to be ritually humiliated in new and inventive ways by a young, spoiled, insufferable, trust-fund brat who runs a gallery, doesn't want the average “schmoe” to have access to the art world, talks about everything around art except the art itself, and will spend entire hours criticising her appearance, writing, ethics, clothing, and marriage. I don't know what she gained from this experience; fortunately, she doesn't either - and it hardly needs to be said, it tells neither the author nor the reader anything about understanding art. There's a pervasive internet myth that all of art (not some of it, but all of it) is an elitist conspiracy to launder money, prevalent among people who have access to an unprecedented amount of information on art at their fingertips without any inclination to ever exercise that access. Bianca Bosker's book is for them. It is not for me.
Here are the insights that bent her mind, apparently. There many rich white male people in the art world. Some of them are sexist and racist. Money determines a great deal of things. Elitism is not uncommon. Bullying is not uncommon. I defy you to find anyone who spent five minutes on the subject and did not figure this out for themselves without having to turn one lousy internship into seven chapters of excruciatingly dull complaining. All of this true. None of it is surprising, and it is not at all mind-bending. If she wanted a famous artist to sit on her face for the experience, she could have done so without trying to convince the rest of us we'd get our minds bent by the experience too. Towards the end of the book, having failed the ‘mind-bending' bit of the title, she finally turns her attention to the ‘learning how to see' art aspect. It turns out you have to look at it. She learns this by working as a security guard in a museum. It's an insight that apparently could not have been gained by simply going to the museum and looking at art. Some pop science detours later, she concludes that the meaning lies in what you draw from it. This is a very roundabout way of saying, “I don't know anything about art but I know what I like.” Yawn.
Part expose, part love letter. Well I say expose,
except it appears the New York (fine?) art scene as a place heaving with UNHINGED/plain bad behaviour is kind of an open secret within its exclusionary closed circle, it knows all this shit is happening and thinks it's okay, or there's no way to avoid it!
I enjoyed the second half of the book much more because the detailed exploration of the amount that the art world depends on rich assholes was no longer the primary focus. Reading about the author engaging with art as opposed to sweating about reputation, seeing them really dive into the questions around what is art, what makes good art, and arrive at a much more expansive view, and an open perspective, a new way of looking at the world at large was an inspiring experience.
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