Sterling Proffer

What artists really need, writes Amy Whitaker in Art Thinking, “is not to be paid to make the things they already know how to make, but to somehow find space inside their financials to play and take risks to develop the next thing.”

I suggested that Substack’s day of reckoning may still lie ahead. The bigger Substack gets, the more ideologically diverse its author pool becomes, the greater the chances for highly inflammatory, potentially harmful content.

Great art, even good art, relies on the existence of individuals who are able to devote the lion’s share of their energy to producing it—in other words, professionals.

The 2010s is what I want to call the era of Lifestyle. You know what it felt like, because you lived through it. And I did too. Since 2014 I have lived in New York, inside the machine where Lifestyle is made. Spending my waking moments moving through these branded experiences, I felt they they pointed to something I could say but not name.