[2] Being in an "unstable" and "beyond exhausted" state, along with her frustration toward the media, caused her to consider ending the Grimes project and solely writing songs for other artists, or at least putting her life in the public eye on hold.

In a 2015 feature by The Fader, Boucher stated that while working in music studios "there [were] all these engineers [that didn't let her] touch the equipment [...] and then a male producer would come in, and he'd be allowed to do it".

She began using Ableton Live[13] after recording Visions entirely in GarageBand and also learned how to play the guitar, drums, keys, ukulele, and violin to explore new musical directions on Art Angels.

The negative response to the single from fans, who believed Boucher was "pandering to the radio", led media outlets to report that this was the reason she had started over the recording of her new album.

"Realiti" was produced during the scrapped recording sessions for Art Angels and not intended to be included on the final version of her fourth album.

Despite Boucher regarding the demo as "a bit of a mess", "Realiti" was well received by critics and fans, which led her to consider including a new version of the song on the final release of Art Angels.

[17] Boucher shared the title and cover artwork for Art Angels on social media networks on October 19, 2015 and announced that a new music video would be released the following week.

[37] In Billboard, Rob Tannenbaum praised Art Angels as "a marvel of meticulous, even obsessive home-studio recording, uncompromised by bandmates or collaborators".

[45] Clash magazine's Maya Rose Radcliffe deemed it "the truest representation of Grimes we've heard yet: Art Angels is boundary pushing, it's listenable and it's Boucher's most ambitious and most consistent work to date" and commended the production of the album as the "one thing that does tie it all together".

[46] Although referring to Art Angels as "simultaneously [Boucher's] most accessible and her least personal body of work", Consequence also said it exemplified her artistry, being "performative, maximalist, joyful, and broad".

[49] Writing for NME, Barry Nicholson dismissed notions that Boucher had "sacrificed some of what made her seem so alien when 4AD debut Visions emerged" by "embracing the pop orthodoxy", and commented that "she's still laughing and not being normal, only this time, it's all the way to the bank".

[43] In a less enthusiastic review for The Observer, Kitty Empire stated "packed as it is with all this goodness, Art Angels fails to comprehensively blow your mind" and "ultimately, Grimes has not reinvented the pop wheel, she's just driven it off road a little".

"[50] Art Angels was voted by Robert Christgau the fifth best album of 2015 in his ballot for The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics poll.