Scoping the art of New York was quite daunting this year--especially considering all the galleries and museums that, on mostly a daily basis, pretty much every New Yorker can access.
So, I'm choosing just 10 exhibits that best informed me as to the insights and dilemmas facing the worlds of painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and video.
Yes, there were many exhibits that offered a thought-provoking methodology; my own Top 10, then, compiles what I found to be the most compelling experiences of 2013.
1. Come Together: Surviving Sandy, curated by Phong Bui at Industry City in Brooklyn, provided a true survey of 21st century art. All media were represented in a show that will go down as "important" for capturing the current condition of the New York City art world. 100 years from now, it will be remembered at least as significant as the 1913 Armory Show is today.
2. Anselm Kiefer Morgenthau Plan at Gagosian Gallery was a feast for all senses. Kiefer implemented his thick impasto paint technique to create large-scale multi-media paintings that were extraordinary to look at. Their meaning might be embedded in the cultural anxiety of post-WW II Germany, but what was most fascinating remains the artist's vision that comes across in the sculptural use of materials.
3. Jean-Michel Basquiat, again at Gagosian, was nothing short of a blessing from the gods. (I still remember seeing his exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum in 2005--very much an inspiration, as well.) True, Basqiuat has become mythologized thanks to Julian Schnabel and Jeffery Wright, but well done retrospectives like this one, unfortunately, are an all too rare event.
4. I'm a big fan of Surrealism. (You know--Breton, Dali, Miro--those guys.) And Drawing Surrealism at the Morgan Library was a must see this year. Displaying the full scope of Surrealism, how the idea stretched outwards globally (making it as far as Japan in its conquest from the late 1920s to the early '40s), this was a survey that displayed full development and progression in packed two-room gallery.
5. "I met someone in a deli" is a classic New York saying, implying a long story is forthcoming. But, literally, I met a guy in a deli who I'd seen earlier during my night in Chelsea. He advised me to see this show before it closed. I went, and now I realize that someone in that deli was heaven sent. Ashley Bickerton Mitchondrial-eveviral at Lehmann Maupin Gallery on the Lower East Side was one of those exhibits that you'll be talking about five years from now saying, "I remember this show in 2013..."
6. Michael Williams is a young painter who works in Brooklyn and has had a few solo shows with Canada Gallery in the LES. Each show has been refreshing, as Williams' style continues to evolve. His current work--paintings created on computer, printed on canvas, then painted over--is yet another fresh approach. Williams' pictures are often very humorous, too.
7. Draw Gym at Know More Games in Carroll Gardens was written up in the New York Times by Roberta Smith. Subsequently, I felt compelled to see the show--curated by eccentric artist Brian Belott. A survey of "underground" art that's being made by well-knowns such as Chris Marrtin and Joe Bradley, the show also looked at many up-and-comers.
8. Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui at the Brooklyn Museum was a brilliant sculptural exhibit. Anatsui works with large-scale installations, created with wire and found materials like bottle caps. (He also sculpts with wood.) The larger wire works were hung high on the walls, allowing them to fall how they may. The result? A new perspective every time they're hung.
9. When I was in graduate school, I had a studio visit with Glenn Goldberg. He's a calm and composed communicator, which you could easily say also describes his paintings. This exhibition at Jason McCoy Gallery on Madison Avenue displayed Goldberg's more experimental use of teddy bears and birds to create iconic images with a kind of arabesque motif--a decorative pleasure house and a unique creative effort.
10. To complete my list (which is hard because I'm leaving out so many other deserving exhibits), I have to go with Chuck Webster at Betty Cuningham Gallery in Chelsea. In fact, I went to this exhibit twice, just to get the full scope of the enterprise. My second time, I got lost in one of the huge panel paintings--struck by the artist's ability to manipulate the strokes with such ferocity, all while maintaining a balance of form. Or, Webster's sense of continuity within abstract expressionism, just mutated for 21st-century absurdum.
