For years I always wrote a post in late December about the best art I had seen that year. When I worked for ArtPrize I got to travel to art fairs, biennials, and various cities where I visited museums and galleries. When Covid hit in 2020 ArtPrize was canceled and I left that job. I still wrote a Best Art of 2020 post, but it was an odd one, reflecting the strangeness of pandemic lockdown, and stretching the definition of art to include video games I was playing and books I was reading. In 2021 I did travel and see some art, but I didn’t write a year-end round-up. The following is my attempt to restart the habit.
Whenever I do this there’s a danger that I’m going to accidentally write ten whole essays that will be way too long. So this year I’m trying a new format where I list what the artwork was and why I thought it was great, in an attempt to get to the point. These artworks are listed in the order that I saw them, they’re not ranked. Also, this is not a “best exhibitions of 2022” type list, because I didn’t see nearly enough to write anything definitive.
- Ben Grosser, Order of Magnitude (2019), SXSW in Austin, TX
What
The SXSW festival in Austin, Texas has an art program where they commission projects from various artists doing cool/critical things with technology. They sprinkle these projects around in small conference rooms in the various hotels and the convention center. Ben Grosser’s Order of Magnitude is a video supercut of Mark Zuckerburg at public speaking events saying an endless string of superlatives about growth and large numbers. You can’t follow what he’s talking about, the cuts are too quick, it’s just “more,” “growth,” and big numbers over and over again.
Why
In the context of SXSW, a bastion of tech boosterism, this video makes plain how absurd the ethos of constant growth truly is. Also, 2022 was a year that Facebook lost users and advertisers, its stock value peaked in 2021, and the pivot to the name “Meta” has been widely mocked (including by me). I was mesmerized by Grosser’s video of Zuckerburg, his lilting enthusiastic voice hypnotizing me into the bizarre conditions of late-stage social media. These huge platforms have lost their luster, they’re promising more, more, more while they hollow out from within. Here’s the full video.
- Antoine-Jean Gros, Bonaparte Visiting the Plague Victims of Jaffa (1804), Louvre, Paris
What
This is an enormous propaganda painting commissioned by Napoleon to make him look good and counter reports of atrocities committed during his campaign in Egypt. It shows Napoleon visiting French soldiers who are sick with the plague, sheltering at a monastery in Egypt.
Why
This painting is in a gallery at the Louvre with some truly legendary 19th century French paintings, including Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (one of my favorite paintings of all time). But Bonaparte Visiting the Plague Victims of Jaffa stuck with me since my visit in April because my wife and I were visiting France at a time when a number of Covid restrictions were still in place. By that time I already had Covid twice in 2022 (January and March), and we still needed to provide proof of a negative test in order to return to the US. The Louvre was packed and stifling as usual, and we endured hours of shuffling through hot, crowded galleries while wearing masks. The image of Napoleon touching plague victims during an earlier plague struck a chord, the power of touch in the age of social distancing. The painting is also ridiculous and insane. Napoleon looks suspiciously Christ-like in a museum with some of the best artistic depictions of Christ. The propaganda of Napoleon as compassionate savior is absurd, but it’s also perfect. It’s a microcosm of the whole Louvre, a projection of national identity that papers over centuries of colonial theft and terror, that somehow manages to still be so, so beautiful.
- Girolamo Della Robbia, Sketched funerary effigy of Catherine de Medici (1565), Louvre, Paris
What
This is a marble “sketch” (not the final product) of a design for the top of the tomb of Catherine de Medici, Queen of France from 1547 to 1559 and wife of King Henry II. It depicts the queen’s gaunt, naked dead body.
Why
The Louvre has loads of marble sculptures and it’s easy to wander through them in a daze and not really notice any one in particular. This one stopped me in my tracks. There are plenty of nudes, of course, but they tend to be very idealized bodies. This sculpture, however, shows the bony, desiccated body of a dead old woman. It’s shocking on its own, but what’s even more shocking is that it’s a depiction of the Queen(!) and she commissioned it before she died! This sketch was rejected by Catherine (I think it’s clear why) and she chose another artist for the commission instead. I can hardly imagine the courage (or foolishness) of Della Robbia, who presented the queen with a life-sized carving of her dead and naked, looking like a piece of beef jerky. This sculpture stuck out to me when I saw it in April, and I found myself thinking about it again when Queen Elizabeth II died in September, when we were suddenly inundated with contemporary examples of how we commemorate the death of a monarch.
- Réseaux-Mondes, Pompidou, Paris
What
Reseaux-Mondes was a group exhibition at the Centre Pompidou about art, the internet, and the idea of networks more broadly. The title translates roughly to “Networked Worlds.”
Why
This was a really dense and well-researched show about art and technology. There was a wall with an timeline of the intersection between art and networks which listed milestones from the 12th century (the first appearance of the French word for network) all the way through the NFT bull market of 2021. The show included some artists I’m familiar with whose work I really like, such as Simon Denny (pictured above) and Addie Wagenknecht. My only criticism is that the catalog was not available in English.
- Gudskul, Gudspace and Gudkitchen, Documenta 15, Kassel, Germany
What
Documenta is a massive exhibition that takes place in Kassel, Germany once every five years. Each iteration is curated by a different artistic director. This time the show was organized by ruangrupa, an Indonesian art collective, the first time it was curated by a group. It was unusual and pushed a lot of boundaries, even for an exhibition known for pushing boundaries. The curators selected many other artist collectives, mostly from the global south. The result was a messy, organic, communal exhibition that felt like a permanent work in progress. There were almost no well-known art stars. Gudspace and Gudkitchen were installations/active environments organized by Gudskul in and around the Fridericianum, the main museum venue of Documenta.
Why
Gudspace was a sprawling mess of found objects, materials, furniture, interactive activities, video screens, wall drawings, sticky notes, artist-made board games, printed memes, and hand-drawn org charts. This gaggle of material documented the chaotic process of planning this unusual exhibition during the pandemic, with all the humor and frustration that came along with it. I thought about listing the whole of Documenta 15 on this list, but I decided instead to call out this installation because it seemed to capture the spirit of the whole affair (also because some other sections garnered controversy which I don’t have time to unpack here). I’m also including Gudkitchen, which felt like an extension of Gudspace located behind the museum building. It was a communal outdoor kitchen and event space where on the opening weekend I enjoyed a free (and very spicy) Indonesian meal, followed by impromptu karaoke with the lyrics projected on the back of the museum. When the free beer ran out, artists and critics scrambled to the nearest liquor store to resupply the party. We screamed along to classics by Beyonce and Britney Spears until the wee hours of the morning. It was a great example of the kind of opening where the art and the party blur together, becoming one beautiful thing. For those of you familiar with art in Grand Rapids, this might remind you of the local collective SiTE:LAB. The whole vibe of Documenta 15 was very much like SiTE:LAB, in fact I think they should have been included.
- Dorothea Tanning, Tableau Vivant (1954), Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
What
This is a painting of Dorothea Tanning’s Lhasa Apso, named Katchina, embracing a nude figure. Either the dog is very large or the person (Tanning herself?) is very small.
Why
Tanning is one of those surrealists that must have been skipped over during my art history education. Probably because she’s a woman, maybe also because she was considered to be in the shadow of her husband Max Ernst. In any case, I was glad to see this picture so prominently displayed at the Scottish National Gallery. It’s one of the weirdest paintings I’ve ever seen, and I won’t soon forget it. Dali could never.
- Douglas Gordon, List of Names (Random) (after 1990), Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
What
This is a huge list of names in columns on the wall of a staircase. The wall is four stories high and it must contain thousands of names. They’re the names of everyone the artist ever met up to the point when the work was produced.
Why
At first this piece seemed like a bit of a one-liner. I was visiting the museum with an art historian friend of mine and we quickly began recognizing names of other artists, curators, and various art world people. Without trying, we slipped into a competitive game of associations. Whose names did we recognize? More importantly, which ones had we met? I suddenly wanted a higher score. The art world is very much about who you know, with credibility traveling (or stopping) based on loose social ties. List of Names is not only about this phenomenon, it actually instigates the who-do-you-know game when you look at it. A weird and wonderful experience.
- “KILROY WAS HERE” on the WWII Monument, Washington DC
What
In a mostly hidden nook in the WWII Monument on the National Mall there’s an etching of the famous “KILROY WAS HERE” graffiti, including the drawing of a little bald guy peeking over an edge of some kind. This was a popular meme during the war which came to indicate that American soldiers had been in an area. Its origins are debated.
Why
I don’t like the WWII Monument. It’s garish and neo-classical in all the wrong ways. The insistence on giving a call-out to each state feels unnecessary and cluttered. There are many better monuments, including Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial nearby. But finding the “KILROY WAS HERE” graffiti was a genuine surprise, and it completely upended my perception of the monument. The main structure is so ordered and grandiose, but the graffiti is a tiny reminder that the war was made up of normal people with humor, inside jokes, and memes that don’t really mean anything beyond their use as a shared reference.
- Wayne Adams, The Body of Christ (2022), The Center Art Gallery at Calvin University, Grand Rapids, Michigan
What
This solo show at Calvin’s gallery featured several abstract paintings and a massive installation where Adams covered an entire wall with crumpled aluminum foil.
Why
The foil wall was seriously impressive. A simple idea taken to a ridiculous extreme. It bent the room, it had a presence that’s difficult to describe. I do not know why it was called The Body of Christ.
- Peer to Peer, Buffalo AKG and Feral File, online exhibition
What
Buffalo AKG (formerly the Albright Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York) organized an online exhibition of digital art hosted by Feral File. The works were sold as NFTs to support the museum (and the artists, of course). The exhibition was curated by Tina Rivers Ryan, one of the most knowledgeable curators of digital art working today, particularly at a legacy institution.
Why
NFTs have been on a wild ride for the past two years. At the beginning of 2022 the market for digital art and collectibles was still flying high, but through the spring and summer crypto lost a lot of value and sales of NFTs slowed significantly. Maybe that’s a good thing, because most of the NFT market was junk art, gimmicks, or outright scams. In the midst of all that, there has always been a core group of artists who have been using the NFT contract format to make and sell really strong, compelling, and even historically significant art. As a critic, I’ve enjoyed the challenge of trying to find these diamonds in the rough and write about them. The roster of artists that Tina assembled for Peer to Peer is a solid who’s who of NFT artists who have been making great work all along, and are still making great work, market be damned. My favorite is probably Rhea Myers’ Titled (Information as Property as Art) [Ethereum Null Address] and I also love Mitchell F. Chan’s Winslow Homer’s Croquet Challenge (pictured above), which is a playable video game based on a Winslow Homer painting in the Buffalo AKG collection. The exhibition represents a step forward for institutional acceptance of NFTs, and thank God it involves these artists and not an ugly ape drawing.
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