December Artforum Special Issue: Best of 2004
Artforum
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Also: John Waters, Amy Taubin, Chrissie Iles, Arto Lindsay, Johanna Fateman, Arthur C. Danto, Joan Jonas, Tom Holert, Roni Horn, and many more select the best of 2004 in film, music, and books.
“In 2004, insider-outsider, faux-rebel art appeared as the rising sign of the ambitious post-MFA artist-monkey. Every pretty picture and scrappy drawing hanging on a gallery wall seemed to stand for a defused desire, a wallpapered-over possibility, a patch in the sails of the happy ship that carried us smoothly into another cold, bright winter.”–John Kelsey on New York
Plus: “The Artists’ Artists.” Kai Althoff, Lucy McKenzie, David Reed, Jeremy Deller, Cecily Brown, Alex Katz, Wolfgang Tillmans, Monica Bonvicini, Jason Meadows, Philippe Parreno, Trisha Donnelly, Tacita Dean, and many others reveal which shows mattered to the only audience that counts.
“The Tate was my Lourdes, and there I journeyed to see if I, too, would be a believer.–Glenn Ligon on Luc Tuymans at Tate Modern
And a special feature: “Everybody Was There: The Wrong Guide to New York in 2004.” If it doesn’t appear on Ali Subotnick, Massimiliano Gioni, and Maurizio Cattelan’s encyclopedic roundup of Gotham’s comings and goings, bargains and rip-offs, victories and disasters over the past year, chances are it never really happened.
Plus: “Manet at the Prado: Two Views”: Art historians Svetlana Alpers and Carol Armstrong make the pilgrimage to an exhibition they call one of the best ever. Meanwhile, journalist and sci-fi futurist Bruce Sterling calls 2004 “The Year of Oil,” pondering the continuing significance of the black stuff in global affairs, and its reflection in recent art. Art historian Anne M. Wagner visits the roomful of mirrors by Robert Smithson at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Barry Schwabsky finds new convictions at the Bienal de Sao Paulo; and Klaus Kertess sees the end of modernist utopianism in Neo Rauch at Vienna’s Albertina Museum.
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