darte's oblique take on contemporary art: stories, encounters and visual short circuits.
We’ve never been this good at having good taste. Unfortunately, we’re all getting good at it in exactly the same way.
First comes the look. Everything else comes later.
Before we have anything to say, we already want to be recognisable.
When everyone learns the same codes, taste stops distinguishing people and starts making them look alike.
This is not a wellness column. It’s art, culture, money, taste and bad ideas served hot enough to be irresistible.
In a world where everyone can publish everything, someone saying “this one” starts to matter again.
Careers are built this way too: one exhibition, one city, one selection, one line at a time.
AI isn’t just learning how to make images. It’s learning how easily it can imitate what we call style.
An artwork now has to survive in the same world as fashion campaigns, music videos, memes, cinema, design and images generated in seconds.
We turned not caring into a performance. It takes an extraordinary amount of effort.
A bag, a chair, a painting, a hotel. The real product is often what they say about us.
Clothes, restaurants, neighbourhoods, words, artworks, hotels: we spend all day decoding signals and call it taste.
We turned minimalism into a religion of good taste. Sometimes an empty room is just an empty room.
One sold too much. The other understood everything. Guess who’s looking for parking outside Art Basel.
The studio was supposed to be the artist’s most private space. Then it became a set.
Luxury spent decades trying to look beautiful. Then it discovered that looking strange was far more useful.
The romantic myth says you work quietly until someone important knocks on the studio door. Beautiful story. Terrible strategy.
The art world loves debating fees. It spends far less time discussing what those fees are actually meant to produce.
Being seen by everyone means very little if nobody knows where to place you.
Artists can now sell, communicate and build an audience on their own. Which is exactly why galleries still matter.
Success has a problem: sooner or later, it starts asking you to look like yourself.
