The unwritten rules of the art world: what Bianca Bosker’s book reveals

There are books that explain art to you.

Then there are books that explain why you feel out of place when you walk into a gallery.

Bianca Bosker’s book, Get the Picture: How I Gatecrashed My Way Into the Art World, does exactly that.

It doesn’t tell you what to look at, but how others look at it and, above all, it explains who decides what really matters.

The unwritten rules of the art world according to Bianca Bosker

Bosker enters the art world as someone who doesn’t believe in it.

She doesn’t understand why art is considered necessary, she doesn’t understand why anyone would devote their life to it, she doesn’t even understand why her grandmother, a refugee camp survivor, chose to teach art to children.

So she does the most dangerous thing you can do in certain circles: she asks questions.

She infiltrates the art world like a gentle secret agent, changing roles, observing, taking notes.

She becomes an intern, a gallery attendant, an assistant, an invisible presence, and while everyone pretends that art is just inspiration, she discovers that it is also strategy, positioning, networking, calibrated silences, and phrases said at the right time in front of the right person.

At that point, the question is no longer what contemporary art is, but who wrote the rules and why no one ever posted them at the entrance.

Because in the art system there are unspoken codes. Correct ways to dress, to speak, to show enthusiasm. Artists who have to appear spontaneous while planning every move. Collectors who seek the work, but even more so the feeling of having understood it before others.

Galleries that sell visions, even before paintings.

Reading this book, at one point I stopped to think and asked myself:

If art is truly a universal language, why does it need so many secret translations?

If it is for everyone, why does it often seem to speak only to those who already know the script?

Perhaps the point is not to unmask the system.

Perhaps the point is to accept that art today lives in a constant tension between two poles.

On the one hand, there is genuine urgency, which drives someone to create without knowing if it will serve any purpose. On the other hand, there is an economic mechanism that needs names, trends, recognition, and figures.

Bosker’s book does not destroy art. It brings it back down to earth and, for this very reason, makes it more human.

And you?

Do you want to believe that art is just pure inspiration… or are you ready to admit that even beauty has learned to move within a system?

Perhaps the real question is not whether art should be free or structured.

Probably the question is whether, now that we finally know the unwritten rules, we have the courage to decide when to follow them and when, instead, to ignore them with elegant obstinacy.

Get the Picture: How I Gatecrashed My Way Into the Art World, Bianca Bosker, 2025.