Michelle: You know that feeling when you're in a modern art gallery, staring at a blank canvas with a single red dot, and you think, 'My kid could do that'? Well, what if the art world secretly agrees with you, but the joke is actually on us? Mark: I have had that exact thought! It's like everyone else in the room got a memo you didn't. You feel like you're missing the secret password, and you just nod along hoping nobody asks you what you think the red dot means. Michelle: Exactly. And that precise feeling of being an outsider, of not getting the joke, is what drove journalist Bianca Bosker to write her incredible book, Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See. Mark: I love the title. It’s a mouthful, but it captures that feeling of desperation. Michelle: It does. And what's amazing is her method. She didn't just report on the art world from a safe distance. She went full immersion, a style she's known for, like in her previous bestseller about the world of sommeliers. For this book, she infiltrated the art world. For years, she worked as a gallery assistant, an artist’s studio helper, and even a security guard at the Guggenheim Museum, just to understand it from the inside out. Mark: A security guard? Wow, that's commitment. That’s not just dipping a toe in; that’s diving into the deep end. So she really wanted to crack the code. Michelle: She wanted to understand why this world felt so impenetrable, and more importantly, why art matters so much to the people inside it.

Michelle: Her journey starts from a place of total bewilderment. She describes attending a gallery opening on the Lower East Side and seeing an artist, dressed as Snow White, climb a ladder and mumble into a microphone about an "animatronic goat trapped in an inflatable bush of cooked pubic hair." Mark: Okay, you lost me at 'cooked pubic hair.' That sounds less like art and more like a randomly generated password. Is this world just built on inside jokes? It feels designed to make you feel stupid. Michelle: That's a huge part of what she uncovers. The art world has its own language, which has been called 'International Art English.' It's this dense, academic jargon that's often more about signaling you're an insider than about clear communication. And it's not just the language; it's the whole environment. Mark: What do you mean? Michelle: She talks about the 'white cube'—the sterile, white-walled gallery space. We think of it as a neutral backdrop, but it's a deliberate construction. It has this history of creating an almost surgical, sacred space that tells you, 'The thing in here is important. You should be quiet. You should be reverent.' One of her friends even told her she was perfect for a gallery job because she had an "excellent resting bitch face." Mark: So it's a performance for everyone, not just the artists. The gallerists, the assistants... even the walls are performing neutrality, but they're not. That's fascinating. It’s all about maintaining this aura of exclusivity. Michelle: Exactly. And this performance of exclusivity is what makes her personal connection to art so powerful in contrast. She tells this incredible story about her grandmother, who survived the Holocaust and ended up in a displaced-persons camp in Austria after the war. Mark: Wow. Michelle: In the camp, her grandmother, who was an economist, not an artist, decided to teach art to the traumatized children. She organized a dance show and made costumes out of scrimped paper. The theme was carrots. She chose carrots because they were politically neutral—apples could suggest Soviet sympathies, birds could evoke bombers. Even then, an official interrogated her about the carrots. Mark: That's unbelievable. Art as a political landmine, even with vegetables. Michelle: Right. Years later, after immigrating to the US and working long hours, her grandmother took up painting and created this treasured watercolor of three skipping, dancing carrots. For Bosker, rediscovering that painting was a lightning bolt. It was this profound reminder that for her grandmother, art wasn't a luxury or an inside joke. It was, as she put it, "a necessary part of life." It was a tool for survival and for finding joy in the darkest of times. Mark: Wow. That's a powerful contrast. One is art as a survival tool, the other is art as a social weapon. It makes perfect sense why she'd want to understand how we got from dancing carrots to cooked pubic hair. So how does this world of social codes and secret handshakes actually function? How does anything get... valued?

Michelle: That's the million-dollar question, sometimes literally. And what Bosker finds is that the value of art is almost entirely constructed. It’s not about the cost of the paint and canvas. It's about context, story, and reputation. Mark: So how is a price tag decided? Is there a formula? Michelle: The formula is basically... what other, similar people are charging. She learns that galleries price new art by looking at 'comparables.' Mark: Wait, so it's like real estate? They're looking for 'comps' in the neighborhood? 'Well, this artist who also uses a lot of blue sold for X, so you should be Y'? Michelle: Exactly! It’s that arbitrary. One dealer literally tells her, "Like, three of us get together and are like, I think someone would pay that." And the perception of value is everything. Another gallerist quips that "Real art shouldn’t cost less than $3,000." The high price tag is part of what signals that it's important. Mark: That is a wild business model. It's built entirely on collective belief. Michelle: It is. And to make it more concrete, she tells this wonderful story about a couple from Minot, North Dakota, who she nicknames the 'Icy Gays.' They were surgeons who got into art after seeing a David Hockney exhibit. They started small, buying a piece by an emerging artist they found online, and then they just got hooked. Mark: I love that. It shows that anyone can get into this. But you mentioned the market is a 'machine.' That sounds a bit sinister. What about the artists? Are they just cogs in it? Michelle: That's where it gets complicated. The Icy Gays are great because they are passionate and genuinely support the artists. But the 'machine' itself can be brutal. Bosker works for a gallery, Denny Dimin, that is under immense financial pressure. They're taking out new credit cards just to afford the booth at an art fair in Miami, and they tell her they need to "crush Miami" and sell around $70,000 worth of art just to break even. Mark: That's an insane amount of pressure. Michelle: It is. And she also uncovers a much darker side. She hears stories from other gallery assistants, like one who worked for a boss who would ply the staff with LSD-infused water to keep them working through the night on installations. Another was essentially held hostage in Florida by the gallery, unable to get a flight home until he finished the work. Mark: That's not a machine, that's a sweatshop. With better aesthetics, maybe. Michelle: It really exposes the underbelly. And it’s why some critics of the book have pointed out that Bosker, with her own social and cultural capital, had a certain level of access and protection that these more vulnerable people in the art world don't. It's a valid point. She's observing the exploitation, but she's not living it in the same way. Mark: That's wild. So it's this high-stakes, high-pressure ecosystem built on a value system that feels... completely fabricated. It makes you wonder, if the money and status are so arbitrary, what's the real point? Is there a deeper value?

Michelle: And that's the book's ultimate, beautiful pivot. After wading through all the absurdity, the jargon, and the market madness, Bosker discovers the real value isn't in the object, but in what looking at the object does to your brain. Mark: It’s not the art, it’s the act of looking at art. Michelle: Precisely. She comes to see art as a tool for "making special," a phrase from the writer Ellen Dissanayake. It’s a way to fight against our brain's natural tendency toward complacency. Our brains are designed to filter things out, to run on autopilot. Art is the glitch in the system. It forces you to stop and pay attention. Mark: So it's like a workout for your eyes and brain? How does that actually work? Can you give an example? Michelle: Her time as a security guard at the Guggenheim is the perfect example. At first, it's mind-numbingly boring. She's assigned to a sculpture by Constantin Brancusi, this smooth, marble piece. Initially, she thinks it's pleasant but dull. But because she has to stand there for hours, day after day, she starts to really look at it. Mark: She's forced into what they call 'slow looking.' Michelle: Exactly. And the sculpture starts to transform. One day it looks like a seal. The next, a foot in a high heel. Another day, a penis. She starts noticing the subtle gray dappling in the marble, the way the light hits it differently at 3 p.m. The object doesn't change, but her perception of it does. She develops a deep, personal relationship with it. Mark: That's a beautiful idea. That the art isn't just the thing on the pedestal, it's the relationship you build with it over time. It’s heartbreaking to think that most of us only spend, what, a study at the Met found the median time was 17 seconds on a piece in a museum? Michelle: That's the number. We glance, read the label, and move on. We outsource our opinion to the wall text. Bosker argues that the real magic happens when you ignore the label and just look. And she believes artists have a special ability to see the world without the brain's usual filters. Mark: How so? Michelle: She describes being in the studio with the artist Julie Curtiss, who is trying to mix the perfect shade of gray to paint a steel studio door. And Julie is there with her palette, mixing eleven different colors—violet, ochre, blue, green—to get this 'gray.' Bosker realizes that Julie isn't just mixing black and white. She's seeing all the hidden, reflected hues in the metal that our brains just filter out and label 'gray.' Mark: So the artist's job is to notice the world for us, and our job is to practice noticing through their work. It’s not about 'getting' the art, it's about letting the art help you 'get' the world. Michelle: You've got it. It’s about de-familiarizing the familiar. It’s a practice.

Michelle: Ultimately, Bosker's journey shows that the art world's codes and markets are just the strange, elaborate wrapping paper. The real gift is that art is a choice—a decision to fight against the brain's lazy shortcuts and live a more uncertain, but ultimately more beautiful, life. Mark: I love that. It’s not about knowing the right names or the right prices. It's about training yourself to find the 'dancing carrots' in your own life. She even talks about an artist, Julie Curtiss, who becomes obsessed with the strange beauty of the digester eggs at a wastewater treatment plant—these giant, metallic orbs she calls 'shit tits.' Michelle: Yes! It’s about learning to see the 'shit tits' of a wastewater plant as beautiful. It's an active practice of finding wonder in the mundane. Mark: It reframes the whole purpose. The goal isn't to be an art expert. The goal is to use art to become an expert at living. It’s a fight against complacency. Michelle: And as Bosker concludes, that choice makes life "richer, more uncomfortable, more mind-blowing, more uncertain. And ultimately, more beautiful." Mark: That’s a powerful takeaway. It makes me want to go to a museum and just sit with one painting for an hour. So the question for all of us is, what are we not seeing in our own lives? What have we stopped paying attention to? Michelle: A perfect question to end on. We'd love to hear what you think. Find us on our socials and share one thing you've started seeing differently after listening to this. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.