“Alien-smelling and acrid, capable of generating strange new textures, Szapocznikow’s plastics and polymers were where technology met the abject.”
—Adam Szymczyk
In honor of Cy Twombly, who died this past July at the age of eighty-three, Artforum asked an eminent group of scholars and artists for their personal reflections on his momentous legacy. Arthur C. Danto, Rosalind E. Krauss, Robert Morris, Dorothea Rockburne, and Jeffrey Weiss each attest to the artist’s irrevocable impact—both immense and intimate in scale—on the course of twentieth-century art:
“Did he want to lead us back to a silence interrupted by mumbles that we have forgotten how to hear? Didn’t he want us to catch an echo of that lost time and to hear those reverberations disturb our looking?”
—Robert Morris
Tom McDonough sifts through the smooth graphic appropriations and performances of Adam Pendleton.
Isabelle Graw identifies a return to anthropomorphism and the figure—to “Art and Subjecthood”—in contemporary sculpture.
In a special photo essay for this issue, artist Duncan Campbell tells the tale of powerful German economist Hans Tietmeyer, turning the bureaucrat’s biography and the unseen machinations of the global economy he helped develop into the stuff of fable.
Plus: P. Adams Sitney salutes the absurd brilliance of late avant-garde filmmaker Owen Land; Haris Epaminonda gives 1000 words on her “Tarahi” film series and new installation at MoMA; David Velasco repositions the art of Michele Abeles; Ruba Katrib forages among Ida Ekblad‘s found objects; Doryun Chong gauges the aftereffects of the Yokohama Triennale 2011; Ken Okiishi offers a taste of the newly renovated Leopard at des Artistes restaurant; Glenn O’Brien makes a pass at right-wing masculinity; Steven Watson gives his word on the new production of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts; Julian Rose speculates on foreclosure and the evolving semiotics of suburban housing; Rob Young hails the home of heavy metal, reviewing a series of exhibitions in Birmingham, UK; Derek Bermel tilts his ear toward Syrian synth-pop star Omar Souleyman; Nuit Banai apprehends François Morellet‘s retrospective at the Centre Pompidou; and London-based artist Amalia Pica tallies her Top Ten.
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