Germán S. Díaz del Castillo

I was recently honoured with an appearance on the Secret Third Thing podcast where we discuss many things from liminal spaces obsession, house of leaves, and art in the 21st century, please listen, it is some of my finest work!

Honestly you lost me half way through the video. You point out that kiki smith’s work from 1992, 34 years ago, in a show about a post-human future, accurately depicted the modern hellscape you walked out of the gallery into in 2026, but this is somehow taken as a bad thing, or a “celebration” of where we were heading even back then, instead of a possible deep lamentation of that future (present) trajectory. I understand that there is a validity to the immediate visceral response to a work of art. But this response too must be balanced with a variety of factors, such as intention, the context and the life-world of a work of art. If art is only for the purpose of niceties and pleasantries, rather than an interrogation of a deeper spiritual sickness that plagues humanity, then throw out Bosch, Gericault and Goya well your at it. There is room for the niceties of art of course, but the instance that art’s truth/beauty/goodness is equated with mere niceness and “only” sensuous appeal is what a lot of people on the right get wrong about it.