Welcome to The WC — your weekly shot of awesome.
Today, we’ve got:
- Why the public doesn’t care about contemporary art anymore
- Another triumph for women’s sports
- Something to wine about
- India’s ticking time bomb
- Clean energy
- BONUS – special new bonus section
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Wyatt
Table of Contents
Why the public doesn’t care about contemporary art anymore
A few weeks ago, our art broker shared this revelatory piece from the Guardian with me.
In it, the author excoriates the young British artist (YBA) crew.
More than 25 years after the famous Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy, it’s clear that few of the YBAs have fulfilled their early promise. Damien Hirst, the brashest and boldest of the lot, now feels like a huckster salesman who dishes out his increasingly irrelevant work to those old enough to remember him as an enfant terrible. [disclosure, we own a Hirst piece in our ALTS 1 fund]
Interest in the YBA crew has slowly but surely diminished over the last several years.
It’s not only Huckster Hirst who’s taken a beating. Even Beloved Banksy is on the decline.
He also laments the current crop of artists. Between a lack of vision, talent, and bravery, there’s very little produced today that’s worthwhile.
Part of it is Old Man Shouting at the Sky — things are never as good today as they were back in the day.
But he’s not wrong.
The Turner Prize, which is awarded to young (usually) British visual artists, has become significantly less relevant over time.
Critic Mathew Collings doesn’t hold back:
“Turner Prize art is based on a formula where something looks startling at first and then turns out to be expressing some kind of banal idea, which somebody will be sure to tell you about. The ideas are never important or even really ideas, more notions, like the notions in advertising. Nobody pursues them anyway because there’s nothing there to pursue.”
Where does art–specifically British art–go from here? I think farther back. Find the artists who were excellent in their time but underrated or undervalued. The ones who had something interesting to say but no one listened.
That’s what we’re focussing on anyway.
Another triumph for women’s sports
The National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), which is sort of the female equivalent of MLS, is cashing in big time. The league just landed a $240 million rights package. The deal, which was inked with “ESPN, CBS, Amazon, and Scripps Sports provide cross-platform coverage for the NWSL via cable/broadcast television and streaming.”
The deal will throw off $60 million a year, which is 40 times the previous package. 40 times. It’s also 50% more than the current WNBA deal, which is set for renegotiations next year and is likely to increase.
This influx will shift the balance of power in women’s football (soccer) away from Europe, which is the current powerhouse, and to the United States.
In other football news, Saudi Arabia is trying to convince Europe’s governing body, UEFA, to let one of its teams play in the vaunted Champions League as part of its ongoing sportswashing campaign.
🚨 UEFA are reportedly considering inviting Saudi club Al-Nassr to the 2024/2025 edition of the Champions League, as it's considered one of the "3 most popular clubs" in the world.
— Transfer News Live (@DeadlineDayLive) November 14, 2023
(Source: @alharbi_44) pic.twitter.com/nlzmyaOp99
Regular readers won’t be surprised. We called this back in June.
Something to wine about
My fellow oenophiles lament – global wine production has fallen to a 62-year low.
It’s a mixed bag worldwide, with climate anomalies to blame for many of the poor harvests.
- Yields were down 14% in Spain and 12% in Italy, where dry weather reduced this year’s harvest of grapes.
- Production in Chile, South America’s largest producer of wine, was down 20% due to droughts and wildfires
- Early frost, heavy rainfall, and drought diminished Australian production by 25%
While a drop in production is never a good thing, it may prop up lagging wine prices. China’s decelerating economy has led to decreased demand for grapey goodness over the last year.
There was so much oversupply in 2022 that the French government spent over $200 million destroying surplus grapes.
India’s ticking time bomb
India is the world’s largest country, and it’s on its way to becoming one of the fattest.
Nearly one in four Indian adults is considered either overweight or obese. Still low by American standards, where two in five are afflicted, but this is on pace to increase by 80% by 2035.
These gains could cost the country $129 billion by 2035, which is a significant millstone around the growing economy’s neck.
It’s easy to say new weight loss wonderdrugs like Wegovy and Ozempic can swoop in to solve the problem, but India’s per capita GDP is only $2,450. While the forecast increase to $4,000 per person by 2030 is incredible, it’s not enough to pay for some 150 million obese adults.
It’s a ticking time bomb.
Clean energy
Researchers at Rice University have developed a technique called flash joule heating, which can convert plastic waste, including unsorted and unwashed types, into clean hydrogen and valuable graphene.
By converting waste plastics into high-yield hydrogen gas and high-value graphene, the process not only addresses plastic waste, which amounts to approximately 6.3 billion tons globally but also generates hydrogen as a clean fuel source.
This process, if powered by renewable energy, can make hydrogen production essentially cost-free when the byproduct, graphene, is sold at just a fraction of its market value.
This breakthrough offers significant potential for decarbonization, especially in high-heat industrial applications like steelmaking and shipping, where hydrogen can serve as a clean fuel source.
BONUS: Links you’ll love
Or maybe not. This is all the stuff I saw this week that piqued my interest but didn’t make it into the WC (it’s a crowded place).
- Effort bias: Why we overvalue fraternities, exclusive clubs, and Taylor Swift tickets
- The post-America war has begun
- Tech is Going to Get Much Bigger: What happens when energy, intelligence, and labor get cheap?
- Spain lives in flats: why we have built our cities vertically
- Can One Episode Ruin A TV Show? A Statistical Analysis
- Inside the Frat-Boy Crime Ring That Swept the South
- Picasso’s painting of his ‘Golden Muse’ sells for $139.4m in New York
- The Arizona Experiment! Moving to Culdesac
- Earth Or Economy: A Global Snapshot
That’s all for this week; I hope you enjoyed it.
Cheers,
Wyatt
Disclosures
- Our friends at Solenic Medical sponsored this issue
- We get a few cents if you click on affiliate links
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