The Pros and Cons of a New Art Magazine

Howdy!

Way back at the beginning of the month the The New York Times reported that Condé Nast Publications was planning on publishing a new magazine devoted to Visual Art. Now the focus of the article was pretty much, "Condé Nast publishes magazines devoted to expensive consumer culture, so it seems reasonable that they do one for art, right?"

Then, two bloggers, decided that this wasn't a good idea. Quoting from Modern Art Notes, "So Conde Nast is going to launch an art mag... good. Gawker nails it." Moving over to Gawker (not a regular read for me)

"Conde Nast's recent principle has been to celebrate the attainable -- give the people magalogues! Buy some shoes! You'll look and feel like you have a bigger dick if you wear these pants!... But what Truman [the editor of the unnamed magazine] really smells, beyond the cred of a "serious" publication and some personal satisfaction? How sexy those high-end, Fendi-glasses-wearing eyeballs are to his advertisers."

Umm, not to belabor the obvious, but I wonder how Jessica Coen, Elizabeth Spiers, Choire Sicha, Nick Denton or Tyler Green would feel if the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wired, Architectural Digest, or GQ wanted to publish something that they wrote? (All of the previously mentioned magazines are owned by Conde Nast.)

I subscribe to the idea (not any of the above mentioned magazines) that there is no such thing as bad press. I adore it when an artist performing here gets a write up in the Journal de Rosemont, I equally adore it when an artist exhibiting here gets a write up in Canadian Art Magazine. And I have said it in the past, "I would love to see more slams in the paper."