December 2013

December 2013

Artforum

December 2, 2013

December 2013 in Artforum

Download the December issue of Artforum, available now on the iTunes newsstand. And get the iPhone application for artguide—the art world’s most comprehensive directory of exhibitions, events, and art fairs in more than 500 cities—here.

This month in Artforum:

· BEST OF 2013: Each December, Artforum invites prominent critics, artists, and curators to revisit the year in art. Vince Aletti, Jack Bankowsky, Daniel Birnbaum, Lynne Cooke, Anne Dressen, Okwui Enwezor, Bruce Hainley, Matthew Higgs, Michael Ned Holte, Judith Hopf, Julia Peyton-Jones, and Pauline J. Yao count down their top ten highlights, while Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Isabelle Graw, Tim Griffin, and Branden W. Joseph each single out one exemplary exhibition.

“This retrospective brought McQueen’s impressive two decades of quiet radicality full circle, showing that to comprehend his powerful and unsparing vision as a filmmaker one must begin with the roots of his practice as an artist.”
Okwui Enwezor on “Steve McQueen,” Schaulager, Basel

“I’m not necessarily a dog person, but Pierre Huyghe’s masterpiece, a pink-legged, skinny greyhound named Human, is really special.” 
Anne Dressen on “Pierre Huyghe,” Centre Pompidou, Paris

“It must be fun to reorganize one’s own work in ways no one else would dare.” 
Daniel Birnbaum on “Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos,” New Museum, New York

“Part allegory, part dance movie, part somnambulist fantasy, the film in all its self-conscious strangeness feels like a documentary, an honest and objective account of the prevailing instability of our present times.”
Matthew Higgs on Loretta Fahrenholz’s Ditch Plains, Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York

· And: To cap this year’s survey, David Velasco takes stock of the year in performance; and scholars Jared Sexton and Kwame Anthony Appiah reflect on the year in race—on difference, identity, and community in a time of cultural progress and crisis alike.

“Perhaps 2013 was the year when we could not help but see, again and still, why global antiblackness, the unlimited assault on the very being of black folks, matters centrally to everything else.” 
Jared Sexton

“Miley Cyrus embodied something both toothless and sticky about race, sex, and the inexorable party machine, though her particular genius was in how well she failed.” 
David Velasco

· Also: Carl Andre, Dan Graham, and Liz Kotz remember the ever-innovative Seth Siegelaub; Erika Balsom, J. Hoberman, James Quandt, Amy Taubin, and John Waters tally the best in film; Arca, Johanna Fateman, Julia Holter, Alvin Lucier, and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge tune in to their favorites in recent music; and Etel Adnan, T. J. Clark, Hal Foster, Ellen Gallagher, Rachel Kushner, Fred MotenSarah Nicole Prickett, and Art Spiegelman reveal the books they couldn’t put down.

“Franco Moretti’s The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature points to the greatest mystery of all: Why did the bourgeoisie go ‘vanishing at the moment of capitalism’s triumph’?” 
Hal Foster

“A cautionary tale that never moralizes, this Skittles-colored delirium of young women, intoxicated with power and absolute in their refusal to be victimized, is so in your face that it could be 4-D.”
Amy Taubin on Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers

· Martha Buskirk, Amelia Jones, and Caroline A. Jones debut a taxonomy of contemporary art practices—from reconstruction to reperformance—revolving around the prefix re-Daniel Birnbaum pays a visit to the 13th Istanbul Biennal; and João Ribas stops off in Porto Alegre, Brazil, for the 9th Mercosul Biennial.

· Artists’ Artists. Artforum asked an international group of artists to select the single image, exhibition, or event that most memorably captured their eye this year: 
Adel Abdessemed, Marina Abramović, Leonor Antunes, Ida Applebroog, Farah Atassi, Alisa Baremboym, Phyllida Barlow, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Rineke Dijkstra, Mike Eckhaus & Zoe LattaDan Finsel, Urs Fischer, Charles Gaines, Fernanda Gomes, Laurent Grasso, Tamar Guimarães, Hans Haacke, Richard JacksonAaron Flint Jamison, Sergej Jensen, Sandy KimYuki Kimura, Lee Kit, Leung Chi Wo, Tao Lin, Zanele Muholi, Sam Pulitzer, Florian Pumhösl, Ugo Rondinone, Betye Saar, Ahlam Shibli, Song Dong, Lucie Stahl, Fredrik VærslevStephen Willats, and Yin Xiuzhen share their selections.

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