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This month in Artforum:
Best of 2022: A renowned group of critics, artists, and curators from around the world—Hal Foster, Lynne Cooke, Joan Kee, Sampada Aranke, Jack Bankowsky, Huey Copeland, Claire Bishop, Johanna Fateman, Thomas (T.) Jean Lax, Andrew Russeth, Do Tuong Linh, Xiaoyu Weng, Malik Gaines, Anna Gritz, Johanna Burton, and Christopher Glazek—take stock of the year in art.
“Dr. Romi Crawford’s skillful attention to the aesthetic nuances of Black cultural production is nothing short of graceful.” —Sampada Aranke
“Laura Poitras’s spellbinding new film about Nan Goldin’s art and activism, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, leaves the viewer unsurprised that it took a gutsy iconoclast to shatter the art world’s corrupt consensus.” —Christopher Glazek
Film
Five celebrated cineasts—John Waters, Amy Taubin, James Quandt, and Erika Balsom—select the top films of the year:
“One critic wrote, ‘If ever there was a movie tailor-made to appear on the annual list of the year’s best films that John Waters compiles for Artforum, it’s this one.’ Boy, was he right.” —John Waters
Music
Four musicians and critics—Sasha Geffen, Jace Clayton, Planningtorock, and Polly Watson—name their highlights of the year:
“The gouged, muddied vocals and sagging, detuned notes throughout Nymph play at libidinal obliteration: sex that mutates, sex that melts.” —Sasha Geffen
Performance
Writer and critic Jennifer Krasinski spotlights the notable performances of the year:
“Cool kids always manage to end up in the pocket of authority—bad boys become good old boys, one way or another.” —Jennifer Krasinski
Books
Eleven artists, scholars, and curators—Yve-Alain Bois, Amy Sillman, Horace D. Ballard, Coco Fusco, Aracelis Girmay, Alissa Bennett, Kaitlin Phillips, Annie-B Parson, Christine Pichini, Audrey Wollen, and Ryan McNamara—choose the year’s outstanding titles:
“The works discussed by David Young Kim not only benefit from prolonged looking but specifically command it, as he tirelessly demonstrates in pointing out pictorial devices geared toward decelerating our gaze. Slowness is one attribute that the internet cannot wrench from painting.” —Yve-Alain Bois
“But underneath the comedy-gothic of Elspeth Barker’s bildungsroman, she covertly offers some of the best nature writing I’ve ever read. If you’ve ever wondered how the all-too-human technology of language can possibly describe something as variant, unseen, and overwhelming as the wind: Read this book.” —Audrey Wollen
And: The Artists’ Artists
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Chino Amobi, Jean-Marie Appriou, Olga Balema, Louise Bonnet, Candice Breitz, Sedrick Chisom, Matt Connors, Thomas Eggerer, Buck Ellison, Nikita Gale, Van Hanos, Rindon Johnson, Marie Karlberg, Hoda Kashiha, Ayoung Kim, Karla Knight, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Sandra Mujinga, Ruby Neri, Celia Paul, Emily Rooney, Sung Tieu, Jeffrey Vallance, Austin Martin White, Ming Wong
Plus: Zack Hatfield on the 58th Carnegie International and more than 35 exhibition reviews from around the globe.
