Art History in Real Time

Domenick Ammirati is a second-year writing fellow at FAWC. Phot:o: Agata Storer

Ammirati is an art critic in New York and a second-year writing fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He’s written for Artforum and Frieze, covered art fairs and afterparties. His popular Substack, Spigot, veers from Paul Klee to Ukrainian chardonnay, with frequent forays into film and occasional calls for zine submissions. (Taylor Swift also lives rent-free in his mind and on his Substack — or maybe she’s a paid subscriber. Who’s to say?) He’ll just as happily discuss football as Foucault.

Just don’t ask him about Banks Violette.

During his current fellowship at FAWC, he has been working on a nonfiction book tracing a recent period in art history, roughly 2007 to 2016. The text interweaves personal experience and formal analysis. Mainly set in New York, the narrative unfolds in chapters focused on a particular artist or the occasional gallery.

The idea came to him after spending two decades in the art world — working steadily as a critic for the second half.

Ammirati’s humility comes through in his writing. He does not set out to say what’s hot and what’s not. Except when he does — see his most recent Spigot piece, “Bunk Violette,” in which he bemoans Artforum’s cover story on the artist Banks Violette, known for his shiny, minimalist sculptures à la Donald Judd and Dan Flavin.

“I have nothing personal against Violette,” he writes. “But his oeuvre layers on melodrama like a vampire slathering on sunscreen.”