After a few years like no others, art publishing has slowly emerged from the end of the tunnel. The pandemic’s halt on physical experiences – including viewing art in person – has only underlined the importance of storytelling for connecting people. Editors, writers, and readers have assumed a mutual responsibility for maintaining this binding tissue. Along the way, financial and social unpredictability, prevalent across the globe, have proven challenging for art magazines, and yet the sector is finding new ways to weather these changes.
From international powerhouses to regionally focused outlets, art publications manifest diverse perspectives on the dynamics of the art sector, with a collective language for everyday realities told through artists’ practices. In a rapidly globalizing system, maintaining local voices is crucial. Art publishing feels at its most malleable – susceptible to change and resilient to the challenges ahead.
Hailing from Milan to Mexico, read on to discover seven international publications to be explored in Art Basel Miami Beach’s Magazines sector.
Apollo
The 97-year-old Apollo started out in a war-torn post-turn-of-the century landscape in the UK, evolving throughout the social tumults of the 20th century and adjusting in recent decades to millennial speedism. The intricacies and challenges of public collection-building, as well as private collectors’ acquisition habits – from a century ago to the present – represent the magazine’s wheelhouse. ‘We are one of the only magazines that look specifically at the decisions museums face in handling their collections,’ says Editor Edward Behrens. ‘This also gives us unique license to comment on how museums address contemporary issues such as the environment and their changing audiences.’ With next generation-focused surveys like the annual ‘40 Under 40’ and coverage that guides collectors on new paths in acquisitions, the title weaves into its traditional core content an awareness of technology’s impact on the sector. Spanning an international audience of art collectors, curators, and aficionados, the readership has recently flipped through interviews with Isaac Julien and Annette Messager, and browsed online others with AA Bronson, Raqib Shaw, Larry Bell, and Teresita Fernández.
Terremoto
Almost a decade ago, Terremoto emerged in Mexico City during a time of scarcity for Latinx voices within the global sector. The creation of ‘a space for dialogue as well as [a space to] get to know the artistic and curatorial practices of this region,’ was an urgent call as the Executive Director Helena Lugo remembers. ‘A refuge for [all] sorts of Latin American practices,’ was one of the main drives, as well as ‘triggering encounters, linking creators, and stimulating dialogue about frameworks in which they can happen.’ Today, the print and online publication fosters a decentralized editorial approach on racial, colonial, and gender-related issues while maintaining the Americas and their diasporas as its filter. ‘Sovereignty of peoples and land, autonomy of bodies and subjectivities within sexual dissidences, cultural policies and politics, as well as economic frameworks within artistic practices,’ according to Lugo, all interest Terremoto, while also seeking to archive the legacies of the related cultures, as told through oral history. In addition to editorials with the likes of Beatriz Lemos, Julieta Massacese, Rafaela Kennedy, and Ana Segovia in its latest issue, titled ‘Dark Matter’, the publication has also released limited editions with feminist and Queer theorist and artist Ad Minoliti, and Mexican performance artist Lukas Avendaño. Next is a residency program to investigate alternative modes of research to the physical limitations of print publications.
ArtNexus
After emerging in Colombia as Arte en Colombia 46 years ago, today ArtNexus not only promotes Latin American art in and outside the region, but it also prompts thinking on the challenges and topics surrounding the Latinx art community. Its ripening into occupying a critical position in the sector, according to its Sales Associate Zulema Roca, stems from ‘the growing interest from our audience and writers in the oeuvre of indigenous, women, and Latinx artists’. Over 80 scholarly texts on figures such as Cecilia Vicuña, Teresa Margolles, Oscar Murillo, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and Beatriz González have appeared in recent years, while a text on Brazilian and Guarani tribe artist Andrey Guaianá Zignnatto has graced the most recent issue. The key for a broad online audience with one million visits per month has been ‘comprehensible and amicable information for both the specialized audience of curators, collectors, critics, and scholars, as well as students, professors, and the general public interested in art,’ says Roca. The publication’s website also offers access to its past through digitized versions of over 60 previous editions, available for free.
ArtDesk
Ten years ago, the Oklahoma City-based Kirkpatrick Foundation launched ArtDesk to raise attention around the local scene and connect the regional community with those in Colorado and Texas’s mecca to Minimalism, Marfa. For Editor in Chief Louisa McCune, one of the main impetuses has been the reality that, although ‘contemporary art is amplified in art capitals, it is born in regions where many artists are raised and educated.’ In an attempt to put the artists first, the publication favors a white cube-like approach with a clean design, in order to let the art speak, and a motto of ‘new and different’, heralding its search for fresh directions for its readers. Given the emphasis on access, ArtDesk aims at an expansive audience – ‘from public high-school art students in Oklahoma to the highest echelon of gallerists around the world’, says McCune. Reduced, due to paper prices, from 102,000, its current print run is 82,000 copies. Additionally, it is inserted into the New York Times in Oklahoma and some parts of Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado; 4,000 copies are given out to high-school art students in Oklahoma City; and 3,500 copies are received by subscribers across the country and in six foreign countries. Its coverage in recent years has spanned from Ed Ruscha and Jenny Holzer to a local 14-year-old girl who makes photorealist pencil drawings.
MATERIA
The more ample time to observe how creatives work during the pandemic encouraged Sarah Len to start MATERIA – a publication interested in ‘blurring the lines between art, design, and culture while drawing attention to the explosive renaissance happening in Mexico City.’ Len also felt motivated by the homogeneity in content across most art and design publications, which nonetheless remained detached from one another, and so, she embarked on shaping her own way to tell stories of ‘how art unifies us across the Americas.’ On a par with MATERIA’s multidisciplinary nature and the way in which the project pushes the limits of a magazine, is the new clay-focused Mexico City studio space, Barro.Co Clay Studio, which is currently exhibiting 30 artists who have all arrived at clay as their material of choice through their own distinct journeys. The publication which is mainly read by people in the US and Latin America assumes the role of storyteller by chronicling what Len calls ‘B-side stories and more personal narratives’ which have so far included Mexico City-based Colombian/Israeli artist Orly Anan, Paris-based Pop artist Louis Durot, and light and space art pioneer Ray Howlett.
Canvas
Since its launch in 2003, Canvas has kept its finger on the pulse of contemporary art from the Arabian region, reflecting on its growing art community and market, as well as reporting on its representations across the globe. The Dubai-based publication was founded by Ali Y. Khadra during a period of change throughout the Gulf where the economic boom ignited a growing interest in contemporary art. ‘A desire to connect readers with the region and share an understanding of the vibrant art scene here and break down stereotypes and boundaries,’ according to Khadra, was the main drive. Each issue of Canvas tackles the Arab art landscape – from emerging talents to global shows and market shifts – with thematic issues on pressing topics, such as the fall 2020 edition’s focus on Beirut, or the investigation of body-centric art practices published last summer. The current issue, titled ‘Out of This World’, ‘looks at dreams, digital realms, and different otherworldly means to examine or escape our current reality,’ says Khadra. The end of the year also coincides with the launch of an Arabic version of the bimonthly, print-only magazine.
Mousse Magazine
The 16-year-old, Milan-born Mousse Magazine is known for its sleek identity and cutting-edge coverage of international contemporary art through absorbing conversations between artists, exhibition reviews, and intriguing thought pieces under the ‘Tidbits’ section. In 2008, Mousse expanded its footprint to also become a publishing house which has since produced over 500 titles, and the following year, the brand mushroomed into a graphic design agency that collaborates with art world clients. On the magazine side, Mousse is published quarterly with 35,000 copies distributed across the globe as well as a website that received a facelift last year in order to house the entire archives of both the magazine and the publishing house. Available in English and Italian, the magazine, currently edited by Chiara Moioli and Antonio Scoccimarro, has recently featured the likes of the British mixed-media artist and poet Rhea Dillon, filmmakers Ufuoma Essi and Saodat Ismailova, and Mexican painter Karla Kaplun.
Osman Can Yerebakan is a freelance writer and curator based in New York.