A Look Back
And a look forward
This week marks the one year anniversary of Exploring Art History, so it seems a fitting moment to take stock before boldly plunging into the future.
The first order of business is to offer a sincere thank you to all of you who have supported Irena and me throughout the year. We had no idea what to expect when we began this journey, but we’re naturally very pleased that some 1400 of you now subscribe to our weekly offerings, particularly since I perversely went out of my way to befuddle you right at the very beginning.
My first article, America’s Descent: Redescending,1 appearing not coincidentally on July 4, 2025, was all about promoting our just-released documentary, Descent: How America lost its mind, soul & moral compass, which I promptly followed up with 14 more pieces, three per week, detailing my profound frustration at America’s inexplicable spontaneous self-combustion in lurid detail.
This was not, of course, a particularly intelligent thing to have done. Anyone familiar with the basics of branding will tell you that, as a new entity, it’s paramount to firmly establish at the outset who you are and what you represent, and by emphatically slotting ourselves in the virulently anti-MAGA corner of Substack with our first 15 posts, we naturally muddied the waters considerably, given that I’d never planned to focus my writerly outpourings on the profoundly depressing miasma that is the current American political arena (broadly defined).
Truth be told, I’m not even sure why I made Descent in the first place. It didn’t take particularly long to do (the film essentially consists of a collage of news clips), and it just kind of poured out of me. I’d been watching from the sidelines as a country I’d long respected slid irrevocably into soul-destroying incoherence through the machinations of a deliberately divisive profit-hungry media, and all I could think was that someone should make an objective account of things before all documentary records vanished into the mindlessly polarized aether. So I did.
And then, having done that, it only seemed reasonable to try to give some written account of my motivations through our newly created Substack which was called Behind The Lens at the time. Well, that’s my story, anyway.
Of course it was simply inane. Nobody cared what I wrote in that incredibly crowded space, saturated as it is with all manner of people screaming from the rooftops; and all I was doing was ensuring that my real passion of late – making films about art – was irrevocably buried in a sea of toxic American tribal warfare. Meanwhile, naturally enough, the only people who subscribed to our just-launched Substack were those who constantly wanted to talk about American politics (broadly defined). I wasn’t simply shooting myself in the foot. I was shooting myself in the head.
From such inauspicious beginnings I began to tack wildly from one topic to the other:2 one day complaining about the terrible IP policies of Italian museums,3 the next day reflecting on the many false stereotypes concerning “the arts” vs “the sciences”.4
And then, in a sudden fit of artistic focus, I dedicated the entire month of September to a barrage of 9 separate posts on Sofonisba Anguissola, in order to promote the release of our latest Renaissance Masterpieces film on her Chess Game.5
So back to the art world once and for all, then?
No such luck.
October and November were filled with the occasional art-relevant post interspersed with ruminations on money and science,6 the problem with professional labels,7 and – in yet another lamentable climb back onto my sociopolitical soapbox – a piece on the venal stupidity of an American media machine that was seriously mooting the possibility of one Donald J. Trump winning the Nobel Peace Prize.8
Something, clearly, had to be done.
Enter Irena, who coolly informed me one day in late November (I think it was right after my post on the joys of autodidacticism9) that she had summarily changed the name of our Substack to Exploring Art History. Henceforth I could write about whatever I wanted. As long as it was about art.
It was in December, then, that Exploring Art History really began, with each week’s post well and truly art-related. And – surprise, surprise – it was precisely at this point that our subscription numbers started to climb.
Of course, stubborn fellow that I am, I had the odd relapse or two, most recently when I urged international visitors to give the Met’s comprehensive Raphael: Sublime Poetry exhibit a pass (while urging US-based art lovers to go).10 But my editor (Irena) was forced to accept it. It was about art, after all (sort of).
A few months later, we began producing our Exploring Art History podcast, determined to combine my previous experience of hosting filmed conversations with the new “video podcast” format that so naturally lends itself to art-friendly discussions through the enhanced capacity to display images.
There were the inevitable bugs to be worked out – the audio, some of you might have noted, was sometimes problematic (an issue later solved by creating multiple recordings) – but on the whole I think it’s worked out quite well. I’ve had the opportunity to chat with lots of thoughtful people doing highly stimulating, art history-related things. One of my initial fears – that it would be difficult to have a sufficiently relaxed, informal conversation online – thankfully turned out to be unfounded. Everyone, it seems, is completely used to remote chats these days – one of the very few positive developments that we owe to Covid.
Meanwhile, I began writing Substack posts on particular aspects of these encounters that I found most intriguing or deserving of emphasis. And once again the lesson: different media enable different exploratory possibilities. Sometimes film/video works best. Sometimes the written word prevails. I’m still trying to figure out when it’s best to use which one, but I’m guessing that I’ll never have that completely worked out.
One thing I have concluded, though, is that, as fun as they are to do, I really have to start seriously slowing down with these podcasts. My principal preoccupation these days is to construct a comprehensive platform of art films, from focused explications of specific works and artists to cinematic depictions of artistic landmarks that are loaded with a simply breathtaking number of in situ masterpieces.
And in order to do all that, I really have to stop holding and producing so many podcast conversations. So from now on, we’ll switch to monthly releases, albeit sometimes with a longer run-time than the one hour I’m currently limiting them to.
We also need to start travelling more to film all that art: throughout Italy, in particular, where we currently find ourselves.
In a couple of weeks, Irena (who does all the Substack notes), will take over most Monday slots during July and August to share personal tales of our summer hunt for masterpieces, while I focus exclusively on putting together more films (and working on my lousy Italian).
All of which means that you’ll be spared my ranting sociological digressions for at least another few months.
You’ve certainly earned the break.
Howard Burton
Those of a more positive disposition might call it “a demonstration of breath”; a more realistic assessment, I think, would be “flagrant incoherence.
Thank you for this useful recap of the development of your substack (and more). It arrived as I found myself writing a retrospect about my own site just two weeks after I started it that I may or may not post. I found myself wondering how often the kinds of developments you discuss are typical of the growth of these kinds of platforms. As to the politics vs art question. Before I started my own 19-year old daughter went through all my prior substack subscriptions and edited them scrupulously, while searching out subscriptions that made sense for me (such as yours). Her point was not so much to massage my algorithm, as that I should have one platform in which doomscrolling was not the major activity. I am glad to have yours. Congratulations on your anniversary!