November 2012 in Artforum
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This month in Artforum:
· Before meeting his match in Peter Fischli, Swiss artist David Weiss, who passed away this past spring, was a musician, photographer, designer, world traveler, and talented draftsman.For this issue’s cover feature, Fischli selects a portfolio of Weiss’s works—including several never-before-published early drawings—accompanied by an introduction from curator Bice Curiger.
“David was attuned to the nondescript and had an extraordinary propensity to question—and to take pleasure in questioning—conventions.”
—Bice Curiger
· On the occasion of MoMA’s cinematic survey “The Rolling Stones: 50 Years of Film,” historian David E. James reflects on the band’s longstanding engagement with the medium, which culminated in Robert Frank’s Cocksucker Blues—the now-mythic documentary of the Stones at the height of their decadence.
“Whether a moralistic exposé of the Rolling Stones’ degeneracy or a garland of their beautiful flowers of evil, Cocksucker Blues was an affront to cinema.”
—David E. James
· As networked capitalism encroaches on all aspects of life, social economies dominate discussions of artists’ careers to an unprecedented degree. Isabelle Graw probes the biopolitical realities of this post-Warhol, post-Kippenberger state in the work of Brussels-based artist Jana Euler.
“Euler’s pictures take literally the Oedipal-aggressive longing that is often said to drive ambitious young artists—the young embody the established senior figures.”
—Isabelle Graw
· The works of Soviet artist Aleksandr Deineka have recently reemerged in the public eye as lyrical, haptic counterexamples to our commonplaces about socialist realism as a literally totalitarian regime of images. Christina Kiaer assesses what Deineka’s unique position, within and without the dominant political ideologies of his time, might mean for us today.
“Deineka is the perfect Russian artist for the Putin era.”
—Christina Kiaer
· Friends and colleagues of the late Franz West—curators Chris Dercon and Alison M. Gingeras, artist David Hammons, and West’s former gallerist Peter Pakesch—share tales of the Viennese sculptor’s irrepressible antics and aspirations.
“By activating artworks in situations that were just slightly off the radar, Franz not only set new boundaries for the three-dimensional, but also changed our praxis of art.”
—Peter Pakesch
· And: Pamela M. Lee notes changing tides in Cuba’s cultural positionat the 11th Havana Biennial; Rachel Kushner catches a glimpse of 1970s Italy in the newly restored documentary Anna (1975) by Alberto Grifi and Massimo Sarchielli; Billy Al Bengston dedicates a portfolio to his close friend, the late Ken Price; Apsara DiQuinzio pens an “Openings” on Bogotá-based artist Mateo López; and Julia Bryan-Wilson makes an excursion to “Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974″ at LA MoCA.
· Plus: Harry Cooper unveils the new Clyfford Still Museum; James Quandt cuts to the core of Michael Haneke’s new film, Amour; Prudence Peiffer exchanges modernist mediums, reviewing Ellen Levy‘s book Criminal Ingenuity: Moore, Cornell, Ashbery, and the Struggle Between the Arts; Jeff Nagy decrypts philosopher Quentin Meillassoux‘s opus on Mallarmé, The Number and the Siren; Jonathan Horowitz elects a new Top Ten; and much more.
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