The Goods is my monthly(ish) series of a running list of what’s caught my eye lately—shows, essays, artists, decor. Think of it as the grab bag: some things will push your collecting eye, some will just be good to know, and all of them shape how I’m thinking about art right now. All tying back to the idea that taste is a moving target. What matters is building the muscle to notice, and then notice again.
Last week, in the morning scramble, I was doing my daughter’s hair when she told me she wanted to be like everyone else. She was tired of being different.
I get it. Trying to swim upcurrent is hard, even when you’re proud of who you are. So I tried to explain it the only way I could - if everyone were the same, all the food would taste the same. The music would sound the same. The dancing would be the same. Life would get very boring, very fast.
Everything in this edition circles back to that conversation—the things that resist being flattened. The stuff that only exists because someone chose to make it their way. Like my little lady and her mismatched clips all over her head.
Photography: Szilveszter Makó and the world that’s actually there
You’ve probably seen Szilveszter Makó’s work everywhere, and yet it never feels stale. Every time one of his images hits my screen, I get that jolt of joy and curiosity, then immediately zoom in to see all the little details.
Makó is a Milan-based photographer and former painter who builds elaborate handmade props for shoots—surreal set pieces, sculptural headpieces, entire environments assembled from recycled materials and cardboard painted to resemble marble. It sits somewhere between fashion editorial and fine art, like Dada theatre with museum lighting (though he insists on natural light only).
The detail that matters most right now is the human touch. Someone built it, placed it, composed it. In a moment where so much imagery is frictionless and generated, that visible hand is exactly why the work lands differently.
Culture: Taste is the last thing that can’t be copied
I’ve been stuck on a question lately: what happens to taste when everything can be copied? AI can replicate visual styles on command. Counterfeits are getting indistinguishable. The algorithm already turned an entire design era into templates—beige serenity on one side, blobby dopamine decor on the other.
Douglas Brundage’s take on Jony Ive’s Ferrari “Luce” interior made the point in a way I can’t unsee: five years of work and the result feels like a giant Apple Watch bolted inside a half-million-dollar car. His distinction is the knife twist: Ive has style, not taste. Style repeats. Taste makes something that didn’t exist before.
The thing I keep coming back to is that taste is what you choose when no one’s watching. The references you don’t post. The room you make for yourself, not for a feed. We spent more than a decade training the algorithm on our preferences, and now it can mimic the surface of them. Fine. That just means the interesting part moves deeper, into interior life, into the slow accumulation of what you actually care about when there’s nothing to perform. And I think there’s some immense freedom in that.
Taste is something we build. Style is something we can name. Do you know your art style? Take our quiz to find out.
Art: Julia Stoschek Foundation, Los Angeles
I went to the Julia Stoschek Foundation in LA a few weeks ago and I haven’t stopped thinking about it. The exhibition What a Wonderful World just closed, but I need to tell you about it anyway, because it changed how I think about what art can do.
The show was housed in the Variety Arts Theater downtown, an Art Deco building left empty for years, and it used the building like a body. The main stage as the heart: expansive, emotional, the works you’re meant to sit with. The basement as the id: raw, visceral, unprocessed. I went down there and felt genuinely shaken.
In the main auditorium, there was Marina Abramović’s The Hero, slow, poetic, haunting, followed by Arthur Jafa’s Apex featuring clips from all corners of life moving at a frenetic pace. I loved the juxtaposition, and the idea that there is, and should be, space for both at once. Each floor of the five floors sent me on similar spirals. It was freeing and confusing and, most importantly, it kept me anchored firmly in the moment. I walked in expecting a quick visit and stayed for hours.
If they open something near you: go.
Design: Clarks — from Somerset to the world
A real left turn, but there’s a new book—From Somerset to the World by Alexander Newman—that treats Clarks like a cultural document. One shoe refracted through decades of subculture, migration, identity: Desert Boots as beatnik uniform, Wallabees as hip-hop staple, Clarks as rudeboy essential in Jamaica.
This is the kind of design story I love - objects that endure not because of branding, but because people adopt them and make them mean something the original designer never intended
(It is the same idea for where the inspiration for LOTA comes from too).
Introducing, Lota.
The Lota is a vessel found all over India used to collect water. On a recent visit to the Eames House, I learned how the midcentury designers, Ray and Charles Eames, were inspired by this humble pot. Post independence from British rule, India’s Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had asked the Eames to help modernize Indian design and arts. As part of the…
My personal favorite take on Clarks is Andy Spade’s desert boot looks—effortless in a way newer interpretations don’t quite hit. (Also: the men’s sole is so much cooler than the women’s, IMO.)
There are a million versions now—Jamie Haller’s, Everlane’s (edit: I couldn’t find these apart from on resale - they probably got killed for duping Haller’s, rightfully so), The Row’s—but the original still resists improvement. That’s real design.
Collecting: Is most art now just too expensive?
The Art Newspaper ran a piece recently that asks the question most people already feel: is most art now just too expensive for most people? The article argues the gallery system has priced out the majority of potential collectors.
The data points that stuck with me: 96% of postwar and contemporary art transactions happen below $50,000. 77% happen below $5,000. And online platforms dominate that range, 62% of sub-$50k auction sales now happen online.
But the million-dollar sales, which only account for 0.5% of auction lots, still get most of the cultural oxygen. The market people read about and the market people can actually participate in are two different worlds.
I get that the allure of the art world is its exclusivity and glamour, but if most people can’t participate, there will be no market to speak of.
If you read my last post, Prints as an Investment, this is the same thesis. Prints and editions are one of the few places where access, quality, and transparency can coexist. BTW - for paid subs, next week I’m going into what limited-edition prints are actually worth spending on.
Happy digging! Tell me what you find!
P.S. New here? Start with the art quiz to discover your style.