Art price and value
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The Miracles You Beg For Begin Here
Editor’s Note: What follows is not a beginning but a continuation. I first met Jorge under circumstances shadowed by chance and urgency, and from that moment he entrusted me with his writings about what he insisted on calling the “Virgin Mary.” The texts arrive like fragments of a dream—dense, broken, difficult to hold together. Don’t…
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You’ll Need to Break Your Habits
The following pages are the first of a series of fragments I received under circumstances I can’t fully explain. I’ve resisted the urge to “fix” them—only a few phrases were clarified where the handwriting dissolved into smudge. What remains is not a finished story, but the beginning of a dialogue already in motion.
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Joining the Dots
One afternoon, while leafing through a listless scroll of open calls—those desperate pleas for money masquerading as Art opportunity—I came across something peculiar. It wasn’t flashy, nor particularly detailed. Just a line or two, almost buried among more demanding announcements, It simply asked for artwork generated by artificial intelligence. “Seeking artworks generated with AI (…
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Why People Don’t Buy Art: The Stories We Tell and the Rituals We Keep
For most people, the morning is a ritual of familiarity. My grandfather used to read the newspaper while the radio droned the morning news, offering him a constant stream of updates to critique over breakfast. My mother, more focused, restricts herself to the local news—traffic, weather, maybe a fire or two. My wife, in contrast,…
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Love Conquers All, another story about censorship
In 1602, Caravaggio completed Amor Vincit Omnia, or Love Conquers All. It was the kind of work only Caravaggio could create: Cupid, standing with arrows in one hand, seems to tread casually over symbols of human accomplishment—armor, a lute, a lined notebook—suggesting that love supersedes all human endeavors. The painting was an instant sensation among Rome’s…
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Congratulations, You’re Now Officially an Artist!
“Dear Carlos Fentanes, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you again for entering this year’s International Artist Awards. We are pleased to inform you that your artwork has been shortlisted at this stage. Congratulations!” Every now and then, I get a message like this. It’s official—I’m an artist! A little thrill. A…
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Ethics and Art: A Tale of Social Media Woes
Ethics, the elusive butterfly of the modern age. What is it, and how does it impact us? More importantly, how does it mess with my work as an artist? This concept is as abstract as a DeKooning painting and just as slippery. You can’t grab it and hold onto it for long; it’s free-spirited and…
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Brushstrokes of Serendipity: A Journey to Gallery Representation
My initial foray into the realm of commercial art galleries emerged soon after completing my architectural studies in Guadalajara, Mexico. The year was 1993, and I found myself employed as a draftsman at a modest architecture firm. Serendipitously, news spread of Guadalajara’s inaugural Mexican Art Fair, a momentous occasion for our city.On a whim, I…
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Unintentionally Censored: The Artist’s Struggle with Instagram’s AI
Over the past month, I’ve embarked on a seemingly Sisyphean task: scrubbing my Instagram account clean of any posts that the platform deems non-compliant with its vaguely articulated guidelines on sexually explicit material or something along those lines; I can barely remember what they call it anymore. Each day, without fail, Instagram flags around five…
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Is this Art? My kid can do it!
In the midst of social gatherings, I often find myself exercising restraint when the topic of art arises. It’s a subject as delicate as the threads of a spider’s web, akin to the impassioned realms of religion or politics. Unlike the latter two arenas, where opinions flow freely like a torrential river, discourse surrounding art…
Carlos Fentanes 