Nina Beier and Marie Lund, 42, 2008. Fourteen dice thrown by the artists hitting the sum of 42 by chance, dimensions variable, at "A sensed perturbation" at Murray Guy. Photo: 16 Miles [more]
Before venturing forth into the new year (and decade), here is a quick compilation of lists and articles looking back on art in the year 2009:
- Anaba (Martin Bromirski), "Favorites (and Worst of) '09" — Massive list of favorites from around town with comprehensive DIY-space coverage.
- Another Bouncing Ball (Regina Hackett), "Top 11 Exhibits in Seattle and One in Tacoma" — #1: "Target Practice: Painting Under Attack, 1949-79" at the Seattle Art Museum.
- Art21, "Top 10 Entertainers Who Moonlight as Artists" — Stallone, Beyonce, M.I.A., and #1: James Franco.
- Art Fag City, "The Best of the Web 2009" — Jen Bekman, Tom Moody, Felix Salmon, and other share their favorite Internet link of the year.
- Artinfo, "2009 in Review: Gallery Exhibitions" — Caragh Thuring, William Pope.L, Lisa Kirk, "Venice. 3 Visions in Glass," Tauba Auerbach, and more.
- Artnet, "Top 10 Stories of 2009" — #1: M.F. Husain Banned from India Art Summit
- Vince Aletti, "10 Great Photographs" — Works from Ryan McGinley’s "Go Forth" campaign for Levi’s, which "stand out in an environment that’s over-polished and over-calculated."
- C-Monster, "The 420 List" — The people from 2009 "we most want to eat pink cake with." On Maurizio Cattelan: "How do you say whoa in Italian?"
- Holland Cotter, "Times Are Tough? Bring on Vermeer and the Pianos" — "Thanks to X Initiative, a smart, temporary exhibition project housed in Dia’s former Chelsea premises, we got a trippy soak in the early Super 8 films of Derek Jarman (1942-94) and a taser-hit of films by the 40-something Polish artist Artur Zmijewski."
- The Daily Beast, "Best Art Books of 2009" — Beautiful, glorious photographs.
- Tyler Green (Modern Art Notes), "MAN's 2009 Top 10" — Kandinsky at the Guggenheim, Anne Truitt at the Hirshhorn, the under-appreciated Joan Miro show at MoMA, and Sol LeWitt at MASS MoCA: "Institutional commitment(s) defined."
- Heart as Arena, "2009 Top 10" — The Mattress Factory's reinstall of Greer Lankton's It's all about ME, Not You (1996) in all 10 slots.
- Christopher Knight, "Top 10 of 2009" — "Kandinsky," "MOCA's First 30 Years," "Two Germanys," and more.
- Richard Lacayo, "Top 10 Art Exhibitions" — #1: Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective, "Seventeen years after his death, Bacon's paintings look more and more like the 20th century's most deadly accurate representations of the basic human predicament."
- Joanne Mattera, "Miami 2009, The Wrap-up Awards" — Monumental coverage of this year's Miami mayhem.
- NEWSgrist (Joy Garnett), "Top 10 Most Scathing Art Review Zingers of 2009" — #1: "If you spend more than twenty minutes with the three-floor extravaganza, you’re loitering," from Peter Schjeldahl's Urs Fischer review.
- Jerry Saltz, "The Best Art of 2009" — #1: Diego Velázquez, “Portrait of a Man” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Peter Schjeldahl, "The 11 Best Museum Shows" — On the Philadelphia Museum of Art's "Arshile Gorky" show, "If you don’t share my passion for the seraphic Armenian-American, we could use couples counseling."
- Andrea K. Scott, "Best Non-Museum Art Goings-On of 2009" — On Sara Greenberger Rafferty's "Tears" at Rachel Uffner Gallery: "Who knew that an image of Goldie Hawn, let alone one of a rubber chicken, could emanate a transubstantial mystery worthy of the shroud of Turin?"
- 16 Miles of String, "Top 10 New York Gallery Shows of 2009"
- Roberta Smith, "Cutbacks in Plans but Not in Energy" — "Chelsea was further rocked by the Gladstone Gallery's exhibition of exuberantly grotesque if sometimes sexist drawings by the Mad magazine cartoonist Basil Wolverton."
- Time Out New York, "Best (and Worst) Art of 2009" — Find out in which category Lisa Yuskavage landed.
- Calvin Tomkins, The Best Museum Shows of 2009 — Most unusual inclusion? “Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield” (curated by Robert Gober), at the Hammer Museum.
- Judd Tully, "2009 in Review: Auctions" — "What is most amazing in this fast-recovering year is the paucity of contemporary works that earned above ten million dollars at auction."
- Two Coats of Paint (Sharon Butler), Top 10 List of Painters — Richard Tuttle, Nicole Eisenmann, Alice Neel, et al.
- Edward Winkleman, The Top 10 Art World News Stories of 2009 — #1: The NuMu Controversy.
