December 2017 in Artforum

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This month in Artforum:

Best of 2017: A renowned group of critics, artists, and curators from around the world—Okwui Enwezor, Anne Dressen, Hal Foster, Zoe Whitley, Rachel Kushner, Wolfgang Tillmans, Jamillah James, Branden W. Joseph, Manuel Borja-Villel, Jack Bankowsky, Venus Lau, Daniel Birnbaum, Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, Matthew Higgs, and Vince Aletti—take stock of the year in art, and of art’s place amid social, judicial, political, and ecological shifts: 

“It should be lost on no one that the politics of representation in 2017’s art world very much mirror the fissures in real-world politics. We are divided, left/right, farther left/farther right, and the identity politics of the 1990s find themselves on shaky ground in our fractured present.”
—Jamillah James

Keller Easterling assesses “The Year in Weather”:

“Before the word media became associated with communication technologies, it referred to the elements. And if focus were given to the medium, our sense of the world would be inverted.”
—Keller Easterling

Film: Five celebrated cineasts—John Waters, Amy Taubin, J. Hoberman, James Quandt, and Erika Balsom—select the top films of the year:

“The quotidian and the historic converge in a Charlottesville, Virginia, polling station on the day of the last presidential election. Tonsler Park is a careful study of people at work, positioned at the intersection of race and politics. This is the cinema we need.”
—Erika Balsom

Music: Five musicians and artists—DJ Rekha, Adam Bainbridge, Quay Dash, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, and Cameron Jamie—name their highlights of the year:

“DJ Rekha ran Basement Bhangra at S.O.B.’s in downtown New York for twenty years. At a moment when queer brown spaces are happily flourishing, it’s worth recognizing the originators and innovators who created the foundations that we build on today.”
—Adam Bainbridge

Books: Seven scholars, curators, writers, and artists—Chris Kraus, Jordan Kantor, Pauline J. Yao, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Rebekah Rutkoff, Gary Dauphin, and Lucy Kumara Moore—choose the year’s outstanding titles:

“South of Pico reveals Kellie Jones as a triple threat, nestling agile theoretical exegesis cheek-by-jowl with rigorous historical excavation and supple descriptions of artists and art.”
—Gary Dauphin

And: The Artists’ Artists: 40 artists from around the world choose the most striking work, event, or exhibition of the year: Chitose Abe, Richard Aldrich, Davide Balula, Nina Canell, Jordan Casteel, Caleb Considine, Verne Dawson, Thomas Demand, Simon Denny, Stephan Dillemuth, Janiva Ellis, Matias Faldbakken, Jes Fan, Peter Halley, Hao Jingban, Mikiko Hara, Mona Hatoum, Leslie Hewitt, Lubaina Himid, Yngve Holen, Maryam Hoseini, An-My Lê, Zoe Leonard, Pixy Liao, Valentina Liernur, Kerry James Marshall, Prabhavathi Meppayil, Amalia Pica, Jessi Reaves, Pedro Reyes, Kalen Na’il Roach, Tschabalala Self, Ser Brandon-Castro Serpas, Shen Xin, Lorna Simpson, Oscar Tuazon, Nicola Tyson, Lee Ufan, Adrián Villar Rojas, and Katharina Wulff. 

Also: Letter from the Editor: Michelle Kuo on art, inequality, and protest.

Plus: Ewa Lajer-Burcharth on Fragonard: The Fantasy Figures, Noam M. Elcott on Picture Industry, Maja Naef on Adam Linder, and Mine Haydaroglu on the 15th Istanbul Biennial.