8 About Art: Alanna Martinez

8 About Art: Alanna Martinez

Your Twitter bio states “ask me about art & pasta anytime” so we must ask: For the love of pasta, what’s your favorite pasta dish?

Pasta is a beautifully versatile food, you can go so many ways with it, but my favorite pasta dish is about as simple as it gets. For the pasta itself: this dish goes best with shells (cocciolettte), campenelle, or penne. Add a whole lot of unsalted butter—at least a tablespoon—or you can substitute olive oil. Then, a generous amount of pecorino romano cheese. Then some pepper, and salt if you don’t think it’s salty enough already. Then enjoy! Simply put: pasta with butter and cheese. You can’t go wrong.

Do you have a personal background in the arts? How did you get started?

I grew up in the art world. My father is an artist, and I grew up in his studio. I went to an arts high school in Manhattan where I had a traditional conservatory-style education—drawing, oil painting, watercolor, basic anatomy, etc. After basically doing four years of art school in high school I was hesitant to do another four years at the college level, but I wasn’t ready to stop studying art all together, so I chose to attend a liberal arts school where I focused on photography, sculpture, and art history. While in undergrad, I ran the school’s visual arts publication, so after I graduated I looked for publishing opportunities in the art world and landed an internship at an art magazine. And that’s where I fell in love with art writing.

If so, what’s your favorite medium to work in?

I love the freedom of sculpture. In undergrad, I hit a point with photography where I started exploring video and installation in my work, and thankfully my professor suggested the following semester I sign up for a sculpture class to see if would open up new possibilities for my work. I was blown away by just how much it did.

Today, there are a lot of artists on Instagram. Are you seeing this trend? Any must follows you recommend?

Instagram is a great medium for artists to show off their work in the studio, and give people a view of how they see the world. I follow a lot of galleries, institutions, and artists, but I’ve also discovered a lot of comic artists and illustrators through Instagram and fallen in love with their work.

Are there any cities with an up and coming art market we should know about?

Plenty—though there are more up and coming regions than cities. Really, the Internet has widened the market exponentially. You can be a collector anywhere, and having a foothold at major fairs all over the world is becoming all the more important. Cities with multiple fairs, or new biennials are definitely ones to watch.

What’s your all-time favorite museum that you frequent?

The Met. It’s my favorite museum in the world. Something about it feels like home, even though there’s a massiveness to its collection and halls that makes me feel like I’ll never be able to know every inch of it. My favorite room holds the Panoramic View of the Palace and Gardens of Versailles, painted by John Vanderlyn between 1818 and 1819. While it’s meant to transport you—through minute detail and photographic realism—to the palace’s gardens, there’s something surreal and otherworldly about the palate and wide-angled perspective.

Any can’t miss art events happening this summer in NYC?

Works by French artist Pierre Huyghe are all over the city this summer, and not to be missed. His roof garden commission is currently on view at the Met—where visitors will also have a breathtaking and unique view across Central Park—and his sculpture Untilled is up in MoMA’s sculpture garden, in addition to screenings of his film The Host and the Cloud. I’m also excited personally to see the Brooklyn Museum’s “Rise of Sneaker Culture” and “FAILE” exhibitions.

Any advice for those interesting in breaking into the art market as a writer?

See as much art as you can, read everything being published by outlets you’d want to write for, and remember that tearing people down is not a critic’s main job. Instead, be open to discovering what’s new and exciting and sharing that with others.