Award-winning journalist Bianca Bosker joins Zibby to discuss her instant New York Times bestseller, GET THE PICTURE, a gripping, hilarious, and gorgeously written exploration of the art world. Bianca delves into her journey through that world—from working as a security guard in a museum to selling art at high-profile galleries. She describes immersing herself in the lives of artists, gallerists, collectors, curators, and art dealers, which led to a book that is part user guide to the hidden logic of the art world and part personal quest to live a more expansive life. She reveals how art has completely changed how she sees and experiences life—the frozen food aisle, for example, is really an art installation!

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Bianca. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Get the Picture, a mind bending journey among the inspired artists and obsessive art fiends who taught me how to see.

Congratulations. 

Bianca: Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. It's so nice to speak with you.

Zibby: It's my pleasure, and I'm so excited that we got to connect at the LA Times Festival of Books, and made this happen. Awesome. 

Bianca: They really put the festival in book festival, I would say, right? I mean, the food, the music, it just felt so celebratory.

I loved it. I didn't want it to end. 

Zibby: Yeah. I mean, I was a little tired. I have to be honest. But it was great. Well, your book is fabulous. I'm not surprised. It became an instant New York Times bestseller. Congratulations, though. That must have felt amazing, right? 

Bianca: Thank you. Yes. So, so exciting. It's like, you know, you just, I mean, the book was five years in the making and, you know, you, I think every author, obviously, um, you wants their book to find as many readers as possible.

And so it's a dream come true. 

Zibby: It's amazing. Well, all the experiences that you write about and all the time spent, I mean, it's obvious. It's like people have to give you a hats off to spending your life doing all these things and then writing about it at the same time so the rest of us don't have to do it.

Right? Isn't that the thing? It's like we get to learn through you and live vicariously, and yet we don't have, we're not, like, in Miami or at an arcade, you know, all the, all the things that you do. So congratulations. It's exciting. So tell listeners more about the book. 

Bianca: Yeah. So I would say that my like short elevator pitch, which I have honed at dinner table parties or at dinner parties and at cocktail parties by just kind of seeing when people's eyes glaze over is that it is about the years I spent disowning my regular life as a journalist To sell art at galleries, work with artists in their studios, patrol museum wings as a security guard, and more, all as part of this journey to understand why does art matter and how do any of us engage with it more deeply.

And to me, the book is part user guide to the hidden logic of the art world, which is very hidden and very deliberately hidden, and also a quest to learn how to live life more expansively. I mean, this book for me really started from a place of not Appreciating art, of not knowing how to engage with art, of feeling like I was, you know, I didn't know enough, I didn't belong, and something clicked for me where I began to have this steep, gnawing fear that by turning my back on art, I was missing out on something really big.

And the people also really drew me in. I am a writer who is obsessed with obsession. And there was this magnetic passion of people in the art world that just intrigued me. I mean, I'd never met a group of people willing to sacrifice so much for something of so little obvious practical value. And they also had this, really intriguing approach to the world.

You know, I felt like I was living this claustrophobic existence, whereas they had this expansive lease on life. They acted like they'd access these trap doors in their brains. And they also told me I lacked visual literacy, which they said was downright dangerous in a world so saturated with images. You know, pitied me and, um, it got me really intrigued on whether I could see art and whether I could see the world the way they did and what might change if I could.

And as you said, my way of trying to figure that out was to insert myself in the middle of the action. 

Zibby: Wow. I love how at the end you're like looking at the supermarket in a whole different way. 

Bianca: Yeah, really. I mean, it just, I mean, art, yes, like opened me up to experiencing beauty in so many more places than I ever did before, but also like experiencing The everyday, the way that we experience art, right?

Yes, like that. I, I write about this experience of a guest standing in the frozen food section and I was totally sober at the time, but sort of having this experience of being like, Oh my God, all of this is an art project. Like, what if it was, I mean, and there's something really exciting about that. And artists do that.

They have this ability to walk down the street and sort of examine like a parked car as though it's a sculpture and take that extra beat, linger on just the sort of. miraculous fragility and impossibility of the everyday around us and experience that jostle that we get from art everywhere. 

Zibby: Have you figured out what makes someone inherently an artist?

Bianca: Hmm. I mean, I do believe that there is an artist in each of us to some extent. You know, I do think that artists, like capital A artists, people who self describe as artists, who work in studios with, you know, paint or computers or cameras, what have you. Certainly there is this sense in which it is not even a decision.

Like I, I remember asking, you know, artists, you know, why they did what they did. And their answers made it sound like I was asking them why they eat food or drink water. You know, they were like, well, that's just what I have to do to survive. Or it's just the way I was born. And they really described it as, you know, less a career than just kind of a lifestyle and existence.

Um, and I think by that same token, you know, I should say that my book and my journey really focused on emerging up and coming artists, which to me, these are people who occupy the highest stakes and least covered part of the art world. You know, we hear so much about the big money, the big names, and it is not at all representative of most people's experience in of the art world.

I mean, most people are like, you know, at their, at every sale is a celebration, you know, artists are scrimping on rent so that their art can live better than they do, right? Like the art sleeps soundly in their studio. They're waking up on a friend's couch covered in cat pee. And I wish that was a hypothetical, but it's not.

And I think that. There's often this way in which artists are described as these streamers and sort of like fanciful people. And on the one hand they do have this fascinating approach to life that's we can each learn from. And on the other hand, they are freaking survivors. You know, they are people that just can figure out how to put one step in front of another and both keep the lights on, but also keep doing what feeds their souls.

And just going back to the artist and each of us, you know, I write about how, for me, I believe that art. I came to this understanding that art is, as scientists and artists tell us, fundamental to the human experience because it helps us fight the reducing tendencies of our minds. And I believe that there is an artist in each of us to the extent that we struggle to keep our brains, which they do automatically, from compressing our experience of the world.

You know, art is a choice. It's a fight against complacency, and it's a decision to live a more complex, more nuanced, more interesting, and more beautiful life. But you have to work at it. It doesn't just happen. You've got to work at it. 

Zibby: I mean, it's not so different from writing in a way, right? It's how you see the world, what is, what makes someone a writer, how, why do you do it?

Like all the same questions you could put to writing a little bit, right? What do you think? 

Bianca: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I think that, you know, I, I got very interested in this question of what is art, exactly, prompted by an experience I had in which a nearly naked performance artist sat on my face for an art performance.

And it raised a lot of questions for me about, you know, where does art begin and end? How do we know it? How do we recognize it? And I was interested to And what am I doing with my life? Yeah. I think that I was really interested to learn that, first of all, the experts have largely like thrown up their hands at defining art, but also that for thousands of years, all Art was really considered anything involving human ingenuity and skill.

And so when we talk about art these days, we tend to, so think of it in this narrow bandwidth of painting, sculpture, maybe poetry, but it used to be that art was anything like passing laws, training horses, blowing glass. carving marble. And so while my own business card doesn't include the word artist on it, I do think that this is a question that I've been like grappling with and the conversation I've been having with a lot of readers about well like, is a writer an artist, right?

Is a non fiction writer an artist? Is a journalist an artist? And I will say I've had interesting experiences of going to art exhibits and museums and seeing some of the work. I remember there was one video piece in particular and I was like, That's a video art? I was like, that's journalism to me, you know, like you, you sort of, you know, made a documentary.

And so these are really interesting, boris lines, but yeah, I don't know. I'm still grappling with whether or not I get to call myself an artist. 

Zibby: I'm still, I'm still impressed you have business cards. 

Bianca: Well, they still have my old books cover on them. I 

Zibby: haven't gotten the new 

Bianca: ones 

Zibby: made. I actually just got some really cute business cards from the store.

And I was like, well, maybe I'll get these business cards and I'll start giving them out. And now I bring them in this little tin. I'm like, I feel so important. Yeah. No, it's great. 

Bianca: And I don't know if anyone ever does anything with them, but it makes me feel like I've done something by getting someone this, it's just a small offering.

Exactly. 

Zibby: Yeah. But now, then I get people's cards and I, and then I get home from these conferences and I'm like, what do I do with all of these? And then I shove them in a drawer and I don't know, I'm a waste, it's a waste, but anyway. Go back to being, actually go back even further. So I saw you went to Princeton, but tell me like your life before then and when you knew you were someone who was obsessed with obsession or however you said it earlier, which is so cool.

Bianca: So I would say, yeah, I grew up in Portland, Oregon. I was an only child, so I did a lot of reading. Books are a very good one person activity and I, I will say that I was, obsessed with art. I mean, art was a huge part of my life. I, like a lot of kids growing up, I painted and in high school, I actually flirted with applying to art school.

And then at some point, adult Bianca grabbed the wheel. Um, and in college I studied economic, you know, I mean, I was an East Asian studies major. I learned Chinese, spent a lot of time in China, but like, I took classes in economics, never took classes in art history, took a few art classes along the and, and then Kind of consoled myself with this idea that if I wasn't going to be an artist, at least I would appreciate art and that dream lasted about as long as it took me to move to New York and try to start seeing art on a regular basis where I just felt like I was totally out of my league.

And as I said, kind of backed off and for a long time, we weren't on speaking terms. But I, through college, I did a lot of writing and journalism. I was a Part of a group called the University Press Club where we were like local student freelancers for publications, which is so fun. I got to get paid and write for professional editors at places like the Trenton Times and I did a brief detour into the world of management consulting for various reasons.

Didn't stick for a lot of other reasons and returned to journalism. I worked at HuffPost for a few years and then quit to Train as a sommelier. And that journey became a book cork dork. I wrote a book before that about Chinese architecture, mark academic book. And then I've been working as a journalist and author and perhaps artists.

I don't know what we want to call it ever since. 

Zibby: Wow. That's amazing. So after you got, well, first of all, when you were going through all of these experiences, did you always know that you were doing it to make it a book in the end? And did you approach it differently? Like, and how did you record all of that in the time?

To remember, were you like, journaling every day? Or did you say like, I'm just gonna figure it out and maybe it'll be a book? 

Bianca: Yeah, so, I mean, I will say that as a journalist, I have the Sickness that infects a lot of journalists, which is to say that I can't do anything without thinking that it could become a story like I go on vacation, and I'm like, Oh, interesting.

Like, maybe this could become a story, you know, and you know, I think that my brain is very much fly paper, and I'm just constantly looking for ideas and inspiration. And so That's sort of the approach I take to everything, which is, um, not always the healthiest, but that's who I am. And I will say that, you know, for this, yeah, I embarked with this idea, you know, like, you never, you can't take anything for granted with a piece of writing.

I'm always like, I'll believe it when I see it. Like, when it's there, and it's printed, and it's live, like, then I can say I have written a book. Um, and until that point, it's just, you know, you're kind of keeping your fingers crossed. But no, I was going into it with this idea that it could become a book.

You know, for readers who aren't familiar with the book, as I alluded to before, I did take a somewhat untraditional approach to the reporting. I did interviews, I read books, you can see a lot of them behind me. These are actually like stacked too deep. There's a lot of art books and there's more that I'm staring at around, but I also believe in learning by doing.

And so I decided that I wanted to go and work in the art world. I wanted to figure out how it worked, how, like I said, any of us could engage with art more deeply by throwing myself into the center of the action. Because I think, first of all, the miraculous often emerges from the mundane. And I also felt like from my last experience with Cork Dork, you know, it's one thing for an art dealer to Politely tell you how they sell a painting and it's another as I've now experienced to spend five days on your feet, schmoozing millionaires during Art Basel Miami beaches fairs and selling thousands of dollars worth of art from the backseat of an uber while people are doing cocaine around you and those give you different insights into what's really going on.

And so along the way, yeah, I You know, took notes in notebooks. I recorded audio. I would make notes to myself just about what I was experiencing and what I was feeling and what I was thinking about. And it was very funny to kind of read back some of the early notes that I made to myself as I got further on in the journey.

Cause I was like, Oh, how embarrassing that you didn't know that Bianca, like how embarrassing you didn't know that artist was, or like, how could you not have understood this, that, the other, but. The reality is that the art world is very opaque by design. I think that there is a way in which it views secrecy as key to its survival.

And it's true that there are a lot of things that go on that could pass for absurd, unethical, illegal, anywhere else. And so if you haven't taken this sort of mafia like vow of silence, you're viewed as a risk. And as a journalist, you're viewed It was very difficult getting access, to me, surprisingly difficult getting access into this world.

It was also, though, a different experience. I had also, you know, done some recording for my last book, and, um, in that case, I was drinking a lot of wine, and so I remember, in particular, listening to one audio recording of myself tasting through these wines during a wine tasting, and it was, you know, It's a really horrific experience to listen to myself getting drunk.

Like, as the audio goes on, I'm like, you're getting very loud, you're slurring your words, like this is just, ugh. So I already am not wild about listening to my voice, um, thank you to podcast listeners for listening to my voice. You know, I don't know any of us like hearing our voice recorded back to us, but that was a particularly cringe worthy experience.

Zibby: Oh my gosh. And so what are you diving deep into now, if anything? 

Bianca: Yeah. Well, so I have. For the last few months, Get the Picture came out a couple months ago, and so I have been diving deep into the world of helping it find its way into the world, and so I've been on book tour. Obviously, you know, we got to meet in LA for the Festival of Books, and now I'm beginning to think about, yes, what's next?

So I have a couple of stories in the works. Um, I'm a contributing writer at The Atlantic, so I write most regularly for them. So I have a few kind of things that are simmering, a couple pieces in the works still about the art world. And then beginning to open myself up to try and think about what might be the next adventure.

I mean, I think these books for me emerge out of an intellectual curiosity, but also a kind of spiritual hunger. You know, I think that, you know, this book took five years and for something to sustain you that long, I think it requires more than just. Like I said, a kind of intellectual curiosity, and rather, some kind of human need that I need to figure out.

And both books, for me, grew out of these encounters with these incredibly passionate people who really knocked me off my axis. They really made me wonder if everything I thought about how to live life was wrong. And that sent me into These journeys to try and uncover a different way of looking at wine, a different way of looking at art, but also, like I said, a different way of living, and I do feel that the immersion in the art world has done that for me.

I mean, my whole relationship with color, for example. I mean, I've never thought of color as being a hedonistic experience, like biting into like a fatty, juicy burger. And now it is. There is a building on the Upper East Side that is this, uh, glows this orange in the late afternoon sun that literally moved me to tears.

And I am not a crier. And you know, or that experience of Of being open to experiencing art everywhere. I went recently to the American Dream Mall in New Jersey, which, if you haven't been, is, I mean, an absurd art installation in its own right. Like, it has an indoor full beach, it has an indoor amusement park, it has ice skating rinks, it has an aquarium, it has pool.

Many other things. I'm a train. Anyway, and I remember going through the aquarium and I was like, anyway, it's a total trip and I was like, these are sculptures, man. This is incredible. And I think that there's something really exciting about that ability to keep seeing the world with new eyes that art helps us see.

to accomplish and integrate into our lives. 

Zibby: So you're obviously incredibly bright and articulate and passionate and all of this stuff. And now you've had great success with the book. Are you happy? Well, 

Bianca: for the kind words. I am happy. I think, I mean, I think I'm as happy as, you know, any, any of us can be. I don't know.

I mean, I feel very, gosh, I love that question, which I've never been asked in an interview, but no, I feel very. fortunate and fulfilled. And I think, you know, look, I am someone for whom books have always been just a kind of North star. I mean, I am someone who like, doesn't get really excited about seeing movie celebrities, but if I'm in a room with a writer, like I start sweating, you know, if there's a writer that I admire, like my heart starts pounding, like I'm trying to figure out what am I going to say to, you know, introduce myself as anyway, a man on the street in New York that I passed on It's probably quarterly that I am convinced is gay to Lee's and like one day I will work up the nerve to say hello to him.

It probably isn't gay to Lee's. I'm just probably like, you know, thinking all elderly well dressed men look the same. I don't know. But since get the picture came out, I have. I've been just so thrilled to hear from a lot of readers who have written in to share how much the book resonated with them, and to share the sort of things that they see in the book that I see in the books that I love the most.

You know, the way that the book continued, the journey of the book for them continued beyond the pages. Of the book, if that makes sense, that, you know, and so that is a thrill that does make me so happy. And, you know, I think at the same time as a writer, I'm not going to lie, like writing is agony and ecstasy.

Like in the moment when I'm writing it, I'm happy because there's nothing else I'd rather be doing. And I'm also miserable because it's hard and I'm wrestling with so much crippling doubt. And I'm like, you know, every piece, I feel like I sit down to the blank page and I'm like, how? You know, how do I do that?

And that's part of the excitement is that every piece is different. Every piece has its own challenge. Every piece. forces you to learn something new about the world and about your craft. So, you know, and then, you know, aside from that, I'm very lucky to be happy outside of my writing endeavors as well.

You know, knock on wood. 

Zibby: Awesome. Are you happy? I don't know what made me ask that. I was just like curious, you know, you're so I don't know, like analytic and this is going well and I was just like, I'm wondering like, you know, when the camera's not on, I don't know. It's none of my business, but thank you for allowing me to ask.

Am I happy? Yes. I am happy right now, but you know, it's not to say I wasn't like crying yesterday, you know, like things. Of course. You 

Bianca: know. I know. Try me in an hour. Let's see how it's going. 

Zibby: Yeah, exactly. Well, 

Bianca: I 

Zibby: feel like you've, you know, already sort of imparted advice by the way that you're talking about your writing journey and process and, you know, implicit in that is, you know, to find something that is worth your time to research and dedicate and yourself and write about and all of that.

But what advice, what other advice would you have for aspiring authors and journalists 

Bianca: Yeah, well, I think that, first of all, you know, writing is, you just have to do it, right? I mean, I think that there's, uh, and that is the hardest part, is actually doing the writing. Um, I mean, I can't tell you the number of things I will do to avoid actually writing.

I mean, my, like, like, the grout in the, uh, Shower is never cleaner than when I'm on deadline.

Like the, the, the, you know, the urgent chores that I will invent to get out of wrestling with a sentence is, you know, truly a testament to human creativity. I will say that, you know, I think that on the one hand, the industry is an absolute mess. On the other hand, there are more outlets, perhaps than ever, to write for.

It's not going to say that you're going to get the money you probably deserve for what you're writing. But nonetheless, I do think that when it comes to writing, it's important to build up, especially for journalists, I think it's important to build up a body of clips, right? Which means, like, articles that you have written.

I think if you're an aspiring non fiction author, I think that's important. I do think that there is something really wonderful for all of its flaws. About the world of journalism and nonfiction which is that any good editor can't say no to a great story idea So if you have a fabulous idea and it and what is a fabulous idea may depend on the publication Like what is the right story for the Atlantic may not be the right story for?

food and wine or I don't know a Bloomberg Businessweek, but I do think that that is the best kind of an incredible ticket in, um, if you can find it. And then I think that, you know, the other piece, I think it's, it's just practice. It really is just practice. And again, doesn't get easier with practice. Um, but nonetheless, parts of it get easier and I think you become less precious.

And I think I at least have found, and I learned a lot actually from artists. There was an artist I worked with, Julie Curtis, who really helped me to understand the process. Of creating and not be freaked out by it. You know, I think, you know, she she just she just understood to make peace with the fact that they're going to be these predictable challenges along the way there is going to be this feeling of breakdown at some point with the work that will be a piece for a point where you think you can't move any further further with it and all hope is lost.

And then you just move through it and you just push through it and you just figure it out and I just, I love that because I do not have that equanimity about me. But I do think that just revising is the other thing. I do think maybe the difference between like good writers and great writers is just the difference between draft 2 and draft 12.

Zibby: That's a great sound bite, I love that. Amazing. Bianca, thank you so much. I'm so impressed. I can't wait to read what you write next, and I'm now going to start following along on all your Atlantic pieces and doing more of a back deep dive, I don't know, deep dive in retrospect. I don't know. The retrospective, it would say.

Exactly. Exactly. The retrospective. Bianca Bosco, retrospective. 

Bianca: Anyway, all right. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much. Such a pleasure speaking with you. Have a great day and hope we, hope we all stay happy. Hope all of our listeners are happy too. 

Zibby: I agree. Yes, you do.

Thanks for listening to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. If you love it, please leave a review and follow us on social at Zibby Owens and at Zibby Readers.