Six years after the pandemic, has art emerged better?

Stefano Chiodi reflects on the state of contemporary art six years after the pandemic, arguing it has not improved but become more sclerotic. He cites Michel Houellebecq's cynical diagnosis that the world is the same, only worse. Chiodi critiques the prevalence of "politicization" in art, exemplified by the last Berlin Biennale, where politics is reduced to virtue signaling. Two influential texts are discussed: Dean Kissick's "The Painted Protest" (Harper's, December 2024), which traces how protest became a style, and Ben Davis's response on artnet, which shifts focus to the crisis of liberal consensus in cultural institutions. Davis notes that identity politics has become a totalizing criterion, making art more predictable. Chiodi invokes Adorno to argue that engaged art risks becoming a sermon to the converted, losing critical force. He concludes that art has accepted being administered as politics, driven by fear, and that the rise of reactionary populism, exemplified by Trump's election, has halted the liberal consensus. The article is published on Artribune.