BIANCOSCURO #78 Editorial: Vincenzo Chetta on Yayoi Kusama's Legacy and Art Market Reset

The October/November 2026 issue of BIANCOSCURO, edited by Vincenzo Chetta, opens with the death of Yayoi Kusama at 97, who spent decades in a psychiatric hospital and channeled her hallucinations onto canvas until her final breath. Chetta rejects sentimental obituaries, framing Kusama's legacy as a rebuke to today's market-driven 'projects' and arguing that true art is a visceral necessity and therapeutic obsession that saves the life of its maker. Turning to the market, he cites the Art Basel & UBS global report as evidence that the post-pandemic speculative bubble has burst, yielding a 'return to order': collectors now demand painting, sculpture, iconographic legibility, and technical rigor, favoring works that require sweat, execution time, and decoding effort over the liquid, hyper-fast consumption of the past decade. BIANCOSCURO will be present as a magazine sector partner at Art Basel Paris under the Grand Palais dome, and its journalists and video crews will produce reportage and immersive Art Tours on YouTube from Artissima, ArtFair Innsbruck, Arte Padova, ArtParma Fair, and ArtVerona. Chetta calls for admiration of artists who get their hands dirty out of irrepressible urgency rather than opportunism, insisting art must carry specific weight and asking readers to question how many authors create to survive inner demons versus mere opportunism. The issue closes with a call to read and follow the magazine on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook.