The Art Angle

Central Asia has a deep artistic heritage, from Silk Road craft traditions to a vibrant early 20th century avant-garde. But Soviet rule left a legacy that included the repression of artistic expression, and for decades after independence, the region was often defined by that past. That’s changing now, in a big way, and the international art world has started paying more attention to the five countries colloquially known as “the Stans.”

The region is seeing a ton of growth. Young populations, diversifying trade, and rapid digital adoption are turning its cities into serious markets and destinations. Cities like Tashkent and Almaty are modernizing, while heritage sites like Bukhara and Samarkand are taking on bigger economic and tourism roles. Last year, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development said the region is expected to grow faster than China.

Amid this economic momentum, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in particular seem keen on building soft power, pouring major money into culture both at home, in new museums and biennials, and abroad, in pavilions at Venice and collaborations with international institutions.

So today, we’re looking at the region through the lens of institution building and cultural infrastructure, with governments leading in some places and private collectors in others. And we’re coming at it as newcomers, the way many visitors will: curious, and keen to know where to start.

News Editor, Margaret Carrigan just made her first trip to the region this fall, and she is joined by Annikka Olsen, Artnet’s Galleries Editor, who made a few journeys there in the last year.

Artwork: Batima Zaurbekova, Waiting (1980). Courtesy of Abylkhan Kasteyev National Museum of Arts of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Almaty.

Iris van Herpen is a fashion designer, but it’s a title that barely captures the scope of her imagination. Her practice reaches far beyond the runway, drawing on everything from the natural sciences to astronomy. The results are extraordinary garments that seem to belong to some otherworldly ecosystem.

You might know Van Herpen’s work from her groundbreaking 3D-printed dress, or her biomorphic creations for Bjork or Lady Gaga, or the bubble dress that Eileen Gu wore to the Met Gala. She’s even created a garment that incorporates living, bioluminescent algae.

These couture designs take their cues from the natural world, and use cutting-edge technology to bring to life often overlooked forms like the intricate structures of fungi or the undulations of the ocean. And while we tend to think of biology and technology as two separate realms, van Herpen sees them as much more closely intertwined. In fact, she believes the distinction between them may not be so clear-cut.

That’s something we explored when Culture Editor, Min Chenm caught up with her at the Brooklyn Museum, which is currently hosting “Sculpting the Senses.” It’s a retrospective featuring more than 140 of her designs. The exhibition opened in May and has been so popular that it's been extended through January 2027.

In their conversation, we talked about her lifelong fascination with nature, her discovery of technology, and the curiosity that continues to power her practice. We also explored a question that lies at the heart of her work: What happens when technology doesn't take us further away from nature, but brings us closer to it?

It has been a whirlwind few weeks for the art industry in Europe. First, Frieze London and Frieze Masters alighted in Regent’s Park, and a bevy of satellite fairs opened all over the British capital. There were big-league openings, auctions, and a great deal more.

Then the art crowd decamped for Paris for Art Basel, right after large-scale protests in the city and around France gave way to looting and police clashes. Student protesters shuttered the Louvre for a day, but the fair went ahead as planned, with some 200 exhibitors offering work at the Grand Palais. With another protest looming, the fair decided to cancel its weekend run, closing on Friday evening.

To talk about it all, Andrew Russeth hopped on The Art Angle with Margaret Carrigan, our London-based News Editor, and Katya Kazakina, our Art Detective columnist, who is currently based in Rome.

It is not a happy time to be an arts advocate in the United States. The last year has seen the real threat of eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts, and the spectacle of the head of Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History hauled in front of Congress to be publicly grilled about her programming by Republicans.

For many observers, all this is very alarming, but also gives the sinking feeling of having seen this story play out before. You often hear that we are living through a return of the “culture wars,” the turbulent period of very public, very bruising battles over decency and public funding for the arts from the late 1980s and early 1990s. In many ways, what happened back then set the template for the politics of today.

This is the story told in the recently published book, The Perfect Moment: God, Sex, Art, and the Birth of America's Culture Wars. In it, author Isaac Butler revisits the various battles over the National Endowment for the Arts from of the ‘80s and ‘90s. He joins Ben Davis today to go through this history, and to ask what it can tell us about the present.

Images:

Projection of a Robert Mapplethorpe self-portrait during a protest at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Photographed June 30, 1989 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Carol Guzy/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Christians protest outside the Ziegfeld Theater in Manhattan, at the portrayal of Christ in Martin Scorsese's film 'The Last Temptation of Christ', New York City, 13th August 1988. One of the placards reads: 'God Damns Blasphemy'. (Photo by Barbara Alper/Getty Images)

Andres Serrano, Piss Christ, (1987). Courtesy Andres Serrano.

If you are in New York this month, I have to insist that you make it over to the 41 Cooper Gallery at Cooper Union in the East Village, where an absolutely thrilling group show is on view through October 31. The exhibition looks at the history and continued resonance of Guild & Greyshkul, a storied gallery that operated from 2003 to 2009 in SoHo. It features work by more than 70 artists, famous and obscure, younger and older, including Mariah Robertson, Dana Schutz, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Ryan Johnson, B. Wurtz, Ryan Muller, and Valerie Hegarty. Some exhibited at the gallery, and others were part of its extended network.

The show was organized by Guild & Greyshkul’s three intrepid artist founders, Anya Kielar, Johannes VanDerBeek, and Sara VanDerBeek, at the invitation of Adriana Farmiga, the dean of the Cooper Union School of Art, and Yuri Masnyj, its associate dean. All five have work in the show.

Sara VanDerBeek recently came by the Artnet News offices to discuss how she and her colleagues built Guild & Greyshkul as young artists in New York. She spoke with Andrew Russeth about how they made ends meet (spoiler alert: it was not always easy), why they decided to pull the plug, and the advice she would offer to someone opening a space today. It’s a conversation about a brief moment in time that I think gets at issues that many artists, curators, and dealers are confronting as New York becomes increasingly expensive and its art scene in some ways becomes more and more averse to risk.