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This month in Artforum:
ART IN RIO: Seven distinguished critics, curators, and artists—Guilherme Wisnik, Tamar Guimarães, Sérgio B. Martins, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Irene V. Small, Renata Lucas, and Chris Stults—examine contemporary art and culture in Rio de Janeiro as the city witnesses a profound physical transformation and increasingly intense protests in anticipation of hosting the World Cup this summer and the Olympics in 2016:
“An ethic of authenticity has recently surfaced among contemporary artists and activists in Brazil, who have witnessed unprecedented social unrest over the course of the past year.”
— Irene V. Small
“Cildo Meireles’s practice suggests that in a country with such a weak tradition of public engagement, a work of art achieves something like a true public dimension not through the insistent physicality of monuments in parks and city squares but through ephemeral effects.”
— Guilherme Wisnik
“Rio’s mayor, Eduardo Paes, has gone so far as to call the new Museu de Arte do Rio a ‘cultural anchor’—but one could easily replace the term ‘cultural’ with ‘ideological.’ ”
— Sérgio B. Martins
Summer Preview: Artforum offers a sneak peek at forty exhibitions opening around the world between May and August, including Jeff Koons‘s upcoming retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York:
“Koons has arguably succeeded in making himself the most talked-about artist of his era, but the quality of that discussion has suffered from two deficiencies. This retrospective aims to remedy both.”
— Thomas Crow
“Statements of Intent“: Mark Godfrey considers the much-discussed but still elusive abstractions of Jacqueline Humphries, Laura Owens, Amy Sillman, and Charline von Heyl—and the ways in which they challenge the taboos of composition, identity, gesture, and technology:
“These artists, in their different ways, have departed from the authentic gesture of midcentury painting and the emptied postmodern gesture. Instead, their canvases are populated by the uncertain, fake, or unlocatable.”
— Mark Godfrey
Helen Molesworth and Emily Apter take stock of the 2014 Whitney Biennial:
“Have we totally given up on art history as the governing methodology, or even the deep structure, of museum exhibitions?”
— Helen Molesworth
Openings: David Velasco follows the performative trail of Yve Laris Cohen:
“For Laris Cohen, the point is less to rehearse our archival impulse and more to play the field.”
— David Velasco
· Also: Virginia Dwan and Lucy R. Lippard remember Nancy Holt; Glenn O’Brien and Ingrid Sischy eulogize critic Rene Ricard; Craig Dworkin deciphers the writings of Marcel Broodthaers; J. Hoberman assesses Sigmar Polke‘s films; Ara H. Merjian reviews “Italian Futurism“ at the Guggenheim; Tony Pipolo surveys Denis Villeneuve‘s Enemy and Richard Ayoade‘s The Double; and Tim Griffin weighs in on the existentialist gunslingers of HBO’s True Detective.
· Plus: Julia Bryan-Wilson on Margaret Harrison, Kay Hunt, and Mary Kelly‘s Women and Work; Stephen Squibb on David Levine; and T. J. Demos on Sammy Baloji and Alice Seeley Harris; finally, filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour reveals her Top Ten.
