MARTIN KEMP
Michelangelo drawings (at the British Museum) and Leonardo drawings (Victoria and Albert Museum) in the same year, both using computer graphics imaginatively (but I'm biased, since I curated the Leonardo show). The Adam Elseheimer exhibition (Edinburgh and Dulwich), which was of extraordinary visual intensity - one of the highlights of the decade. The opening of the LTB Foundation gallery in west London with radiant works by Jim Turrell. Hockney portraits at the NPG (but as I sitter, I'm biased again), which show continual experimentation, visual intelligence and humane responsiveness. But sadly not the Velasquez show at the National Gallery, which lacks any sustained rationale.
SUZANNE COTTER
Zaha Hadid's exhibition at the Guggenheim, New York - a brilliant exposition of Hadid's paintings and drawings and architectural projects, boldly installed within to Lloyd Wright's sculptural masterpiece - not a straight line to be seen anywhere! - and The Michael Clark Company's stunning performance 'Mmm' at the Barbican, the second piece in his three-part homage to the music of Stravinsky. Jeff Koons' 'Cracked Egg (Blue)' in Gagosian's elegant window front space in Mayfair; Glenn Ligon at Thomas and Dane and Klaus Weber's fountain installed at Herald Street, 'The Big Giving' were among the best small gallery shows. David Hockney's Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery was an inspiration; the crowds around the portrait of his parents was almost as mesmerising as the taut psychology of the work itself. Bridget Riley's gorgeous new paintings and watercolours at Timothy Taylor were irresistible; and the beautifully installed exhibition at Anthony Reynolds of Ian Breakwell's last works before he died was a moving and eloquent tribute to the artist. The Berlin Biennial was an intelligent, unpredictable and thought-provoking exhibition with some great work by equally great artists, present and past. Best group show of the year for me was 'The Gold Standard' at PS1, curated by Bob Nickas, a literally brilliant selection of work and a meditation on themes of value and power. Great stuff.
HILARY HARKNESS
"Josef Hoffmann: Interiors, 1902-1913" at Neue Galerie
"Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s" at the Met
"AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion" at the Met
"Artist's Choice: Herzog & de Meuron, Perception Restrained" at MoMA
Brice Marden gets paint to look just right in terms of texture and the look of the pigment, so I enjoyed his show at MoMA. His monochrome paintings were among my first inspirations to paint.
My new interest this year is in drawings by young video artists. I am thinking especially of Kalup Linzy's gouaches at Taxter and Spengemann, and acrylics by Pete Deevakul. What is it that they can't fit into their videos? It's more than just visual overflow onto paper, and their results are exciting.
SARAH DOUGLAS
I've been asked to recommend something I greatly enjoyed in 2006. I can unequivocally recommend a work of art, a great work of art, that I have never seen. Let me explain. In June I went, as I have done for the past three years, to a large contemporary art fair that takes place annually in Basel, Switzerland. One hasn't nearly enough time to see all the art on view, and the average viewing time per art work is something like 0.6 seconds. If you're lucky. The experience ends up a blur, of colors, shapes, names, dates and prices. After the fair ended, I found I had an extra day on my hands, a day I ended up spending wandering around Basel -- a small, quiet, idyllic canton on the Rhine, by the way -- in a zombielike state. It wasn't unpleasant. When I returned to New York, however, and told a colleague the story of that lost day, he asked why I hadn't instead gone to Colmar, France, and seen 16th-century painter Matthais Grunewald's famous Isenheim Altarpiece in the Musee D'Unterlinden. I ought to have done that; I ought to have spent some time with a work of art as stupendously great, as wrenching and exultant, as the Isenheim Altarpiece. The point is, since June I've been thinking intermittently about the thing, especially the crucifixion scene, with its strangely marmoreal, half-collapsed Mary, and the sinewy, thorn-crowned Christ, whose splayed fingers alone are proof positive of W H Auden's observation about the Old Masters, that "about suffering they were never wrong."
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