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This month in Artforum:
THE BEST OF 2015.
Sixteen distinguished contributors—Helen Molesworth, Thelma Golden, Hal Foster, Lynne Cooke, Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda, Jack Bankowsky, Magalí Arriola, Vince Aletti, Chus Martínez, Sarah McCrory, Pi Li, Tim Griffin, Daniel Birnbaum, Matthew Higgs, and Stéphanie Moisdon—consider the year in art:
“Opening dinners at the Chateau Marmont; parties where Tacita Dean can be seen dancing with Sharon Lockhart; Joan Didion on everyone’s bookshelf; large numbers of artists who studied with either Michael Asher, Catherine Lord, or Lari Pittman; a pervasive sense that formal choices matter; and palm trees.”
—Helen Molesworth on the art scene in Los Angeles
“Written as a letter to the author’s 15-year-old son, Between the World and Me speaks to us all about the causes and effects of who we are right now.”
—Thelma Golden on Ta-Nehisi Coates
“Picasso the inventor was also Picasso the instigator: He prompted other artists but often stopped short of the implications of his own work—and sometimes even defended against them.”
—Hal Foster on Picasso: Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York
“Bonello’s film peaks in a triumphant runway show—a thrilling split-frame sequence that sums up Saint Laurent’s mad genius.”
—Vince Aletti on Bertrand Bonello’s Saint Laurent
“Kounellis’s characteristic subversion of the image—in this instance, eons of equine imagery stretching back to Lascaux—in favor of a materialist vision, a staging of living or raw matter, gave no quarter to nostalgia or romanticism.”
—Lynne Cooke on Jannis Kounellis at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York
THE YEAR IN SEX.
ScholarsFinn Brunton and Charity Scribner join writer Sarah Nicole Prickettto reflect on a year of prurience and puritanism; of (leaked) online infidelity, gendered militancy, and robot love; and on how sex might operate as a site of experience, of labor, of financialization, of violence.
“The figure of the militant is contested—a terrorist or a freedom fighter—and this figure grows all the more unstable when sex comes into play.”
—Charity Scribner
John Waters, Amy Taubin, James Quandt, Nicole Brenez, and J. Hobermancount down the year’s highlights in FILM:
“The rules of documentary access are permanently fractured here when our featured attraction takes off all his clothes on camera, masturbates, and actually ejaculates.”
—John Waters on Andreas Horvath’s Helmut Berger, Actor
Sophie, Kim Gordon, Jon Caramanica, Talib Kweli, and Johanna Fateman pick key moments in MUSIC from 2015:
“Remember when you used to call Drake on his cell phone, and he wouldn’t let you hang up once his Ambien hit, and he started singing creepy stuff over a Casio beat? He’s insufferable and pervasive but also amazing.”
—Johanna Fateman on Drake’s “Hotline Bling”
BOOKS: Chris Kraus, Seth Price, Chika Okeke-Agulu, Anne M. Wagner, Pamela M. Lee, Maggie Nelson, Beatrice Galilee, and Thierry Blancpain on the year’s most compelling reads.
“Felix Bernstein calls bullshit on a lot of people, including Felix Bernstein, a character who understands sneak attacks, strategy, unmasking, disarming.”
—Seth Price on Felix Bernstein’s Notes on Post-Conceptual Poetry
And: The Artists’ Artists: 54 artists from around the world choose the most striking work, event, exhibition, or image for them this year: aaajiao, Yuji Agematsu, Jennifer Allora/Guillermo Calzadilla, Nairy Baghramian, Yto Barrada, Ericka Beckman, Frank Benson, Ashley Bickerton, Dara Birnbaum, Martin Boyce, Cecily Brown, Brian Calvin, Valentin Carron, David Diao, Thea Djordjadze, Peter Fischli, Ellen Gallagher, Ramin Haerizadeh/Rokni Haerizadeh/Hesam Rahmanian/Nazli Ghassemi, Max Hooper Schneider, Jacqueline Humphries, Emre Hüner, Duan Jianyu, Sanya Kantarovsky, Gavin Kenyon, Runo Lagomarsino, Deana Lawson, Sherrie Levine, Laura Lima, Nancy Lupo, Basim Magdy, Anna Maria Maiolino, Cinthia Marcelle, Josiah McElheny, Lucy McKenzie, Ron Nagle, Katja Novitskova, Damián Ortega, Silke Otto-Knapp, Stephen Prina, Raha Raissnia, Chadwick Rantanen, Matt Saunders, Dana Schutz, Joel Shapiro, Megan Francis Sullivan, Martine Syms, Mary Weatherford, Hank Willis Thomas, Guan Xiao, and Haegue Yang.
Plus: Catherine Wood on the Year in Performance, Ian Volner on the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Kevin McGarryon the 14th Istanbul Biennial, and Mara Hoberman on the 13th Biennale de Lyon.
