Who Decides What Art Is Good?

Bianca Bosker looked at art in her New York neighborhood and wondered what others saw. Trying to figure out what paintings and sculptures made it into galleries and museums, she spent nearly two years working in the New York art world, trying to learn what and who makes art important right now. It was difficult for her to get even a menial job in this world because, as a journalist, she was blocked by gallery owners who saw her as a potential enemy capable of distorting their work to the world.

In Get the Picture, Bosker shares what she learned as a gallery art assistant, an artist’s apprentice and even as a guard at the Guggenheim Museum. It’s a fun book, as the subtitle demonstrates: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See. She has an energetic and engaging style, a sharp eye for details, and a rousing sense of humor.

Influential Galleries Often Hide Themselves From Us

She developed close relationships with some of the top players in the art game, doing menial work, such as stretching canvasses and painting walls, to prove her commitment. In an exhausting journey of multiple 12-hour days ending in late-night art openings and parties. Through this immersion, she learned that contemporary art consists primarily in context rather than content, its meaning coming from its story. Not only who made it, but why and where, and who owns it. Art for grandma’s condo has less value than that purchased by influential collectors—even if it looks the same to us.

In fact, galleries representing “important” art are often hidden away from the annoying public. They don't want us to bother them. The wrong buyer can spoil the story and reduce the work’s value. And it can be ruinous for an artist when her work sells at auction for many times its original selling price. While that might seem a good thing, none of that money goes to the artist, and the result of the inflation can be a deflation of the artist’s reputation. Being too popular can be a bad look.

It’s a confusing world in which work that is “too pretty” is denied admittance because it is too simplistic and lacking in meaning, although meaning shifts and turns so much it’s hard to keep up. The idea of an intuitive relationship with art is often seen as naïve. The art needs to earn its standing not just by being a cut above, but also by being less accessible than other works.

Appreciation Through Immersion

At the Guggenheim Museum, Bosker spent hours doing nothing but staring at art. And she learned her way of finding meaning—through immersion, waiting for the details, the meaning, the beauty to inevitably emerge. The way most of us go to art exhibits, she learned, is wrong. We dutifully look at each painting, read its description, then go on to the next. Pros, by comparison, enter the room, find the pieces that capture their eye immediately, go to them, and do a deep dive. Not just for a few minutes, but for 10, 20 or more. Forget the description and let the art speak for itself. Some art instructors, in fact, require students to look at the same piece over and over throughout a semester, sometimes every class session, spending hours on one work. Each time they look, they see something different.

But there’s another reason to avoid reading the descriptions of art in galleries and museums—they are written in “International Art English,” a batch of fancy words that most of us don't understand—and aren't supposed to. As an example, Bosker quotes a news release for a show that will “summon forces of indexicality and iconicity from the aspirations, alibis and abuses of sovereignty.” You betcha.

Bosker was a dog with a bone researching this book, and it truly changed how I look at art. I am delighted to have permission to ignore the museum descriptions of a work, replacing their interpretation with my own. I may be wrong, but who’s to tell?