Get The Picture by Bianca Bosker
The New York Times bestselling author of Cork Dork takes readers on another fascinating, hilarious, and revelatory journey-this time burrowing deep inside the impassioned, secretive world of art and artists. 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.
Bianca Bosker is the New York Times bestselling author of Cork Dork and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Best American Travel Writing, and been recognized with awards from the New York Press Club, Society of Professional Journalists, and more.
Praise for Get the Picture
"Eye-opening." --NPR
"[Bosker] has written a dark comedy of manners, and what she exposes here might be a new kind of country club mentality, where the cultural elite can no longer exclude people based on race, gender or sexual identity, so they come up with clever new ways to build moats around their little castles. . . . Get the Picture is one of the funniest books I've read about New York's contemporary art scene . . . Brilliant." --The Washington Post
"A gripping and often hilarious investigation into the art world." --TIME
"[A] plucky and hilarious account of years working as a gallery girl, studio assistant, and guard at the Guggenheim museum . . . [Bosker] doesn't sit with and sift through her material so much as plunge headlong into it, gatecrashing cloistered ecosystems that want nothing to do with her, and emerging as a foremost expert." --The Guardian
"It's a passionate, brilliant examination of why humans make and value art, from a joyous and gifted investigator." --Lit Hub
"Connoisseurs and neophytes alike will be charmed and captivated by Bosker's boundless curiosity and astute powers of observation." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[ Get the Picture] could not be more fun. A delightful book on an inspiring topic by a writer who could make dust sparkle." --Kirkus (starred review)
"This book freaked me out. Bosker's accessible, conversational spelunking into the world of contemporary art so powerfully rehydrated the PTSD in me between the little kid artist I once was with the self-consciously constricted thinker I became in art school that at one point I simply had to put it down, shaken. If you've ever wondered 'what happened' to art--galleries, critics, collectors--and, of course, artists--then this book is a very companionable start. It's also very funny, to say nothing of very vivid. And, confoundingly, very, very difficult to put down." --Chris Ware, New Yorker artist/writer, author of Building Stories and Whitney Biennial selectee (2002)