DOUG MCCLEMONT Saatchi Online's regular New York correspondent and the former Editor-in-Chief of HONCHO, Torso, Mandate, Inches and Playguy. His writing regularly appears in publications such as "Publishers' Weekly," "Library Journal," and "Screw." He has written introductory essays for several monographs on contemporary art and is currently at work on a book of short stories entitled "Little Morticians."
William Kentridge's 'The Magic Flute'
1. WILLIAM KENTRIDGE'S THE MAGIC FLUTE AT BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC
Mozart's opera has been interpreted and inhabited by a group of artists as diverse as Ingmar Bergman, David Hockney and Robert Wilson. But from the first spiraling flourish on the scrim, Kentridge's unique cinematic drawing style translated perfectly to the proscenium. The effect was always magical, and along with the flawless music, it made one evening in 2007 sublime.
'the daily baguette', 2007
2. DAPHNE FITZPATRICK'S "the daily baguette" AT BELLWETHER
Fitzpatrick's poetic recipe for art: a phallic loaf of crusty dough tossed in front of the gallery each day for the run of her show. The artist's comment on humanity was presented with equal amounts of hubris and humor. It continues to knead and pinch both sides of my little brain.
'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins
3. ATHEISTIC BESTSELLERS
'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins and 'God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything' by Christopher Hitchens are two memorable tomes exposing the hypocrisy and downright silliness of organized religion. The retail ascent of these books was a much needed dose of common sense for America's increasingly Jesus-infused bubble. It was a treat to see the sacred untouchable subject being systematically debunked as superstition. Although Dawkins's scholarly thesis is the more lucid and less petulant of the two, Hitchens deserves props for calling out Mother Theresa as a fraud and acknowledging that religion is a form of child abuse.
Scott Ewalt's The Cock
4. THE COCK AT DEITCH PROJECTS
Artist Scott Ewalt's neon "Cock" sculpture leads a double life as the logo and sign for the East Village legendary queer hangout. For one night this year, The Cock came in from the cold as the bar was recreated inside Jeffrey Deitch's new Soho gallery. Everyone was there, inventing themselves and basking in the red light of Ewalt's iconic artwork.
Isa Genzken at David Zwirner
5. ISA GENZKEN AT DAVID ZWIRNER AND THE GERMAN PAVILION, VENICE BIENNALE
If anyone ever asks you what art is, point to any creation of the German sorceress.
Sacha Baron-Cohen as Borat
6. BORAT WINNING LAWSUITS
More than two years after the film's release, the legal actions continue to pile up. Etiquette coaches and frat boys who were joshed in the movie want monetary retribution for having their racist ethnocentrism exposed on the big screens. By gaining the upper hand a second time, the truly subversive film has built a unique legacy in the U.S. and A.
Installation view of 'Good Morning, Midnight' with (left) Lecia Dole-Recio, "Untitled", 2007, and (right) Roger Hiorns, "Joy", 2003
7. ROGER HIORNS IN "GOOD MORNING, MIDNIGHT," AT CASEY KAPLAN
For the Bruce Hainley-curated ziggurat "Good Morning, Midnight" Hiorns contributed two knock-your-artistic-socks-off gestures/interventions. One, "Joy" (2003), a steel plank sprayed with Joy by Jean Patou perfume, loiters and poses against the wall. The spritz of perfume forms a wayward landscape on its chest, and succeeds against the odds in staining the non-precious metal. Hiorns's steely sculpture seems to bend its proverbial wrist at all macho minimalists who enter here. The second, "Untitled" (2006), on the opposite side of the room consists of contact lenses on the floor in an elegant, almost liquid splash of (trod-upon?) glass. The piece is quietly magical and makes us sad, rendering blindness and its metaphors moot by being almost invisible.
Marilyn Minter's advertising campaign for Tom Ford
8. MARILYN MINTER'S ADS FOR TOM FORD
The artist, who had never heard of the megalomaniac designer, followed a trail blazed by Wolfgang Tillmans, Jurgen Teller and Collier Schorr. Still, her wet, sexy photographs of models with diamond-like sweat and shoes in mud were both beautiful and bold enough to suggest that, being profoundly superficial, fashion might sometimes take itself too seriously.
Kathe Burkhart
9. KATHE BURKHART AT P.S.1
25 years into her profane and loving affair with the diva Elizabeth Taylor, Burkhart's Liz Taylor series of paintings were exhibited in her first solo museum retrospective. The show, which is on display through January 21, 2008, includes the artist's "Hardcore" series of digital photographs. (Burkhart, a woman after my own heart, revels in the assurance that porn is art and vice versa. She once painted a series of medieval torture instruments named after her ex-boyfriends.) The monograph of "The Liz Taylor Series" has just been published by Regency Arts Press. It is a hilarious and intense treat for the uninitiated as well as those of us who thought we'd enjoyed all of the Lizes in the series. As Kathe recently wrote in an email, "I am she and she is me and we are all together."
The New Museum
10. THE NEW MUSEUM BUILDING
The boxy modernist stack by architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa somehow manages to excite and not compete with its tenement neighbors. Ugo Rondinone's "Hell, Yes!" rainbow-colored word piece on the façade completes this promising birthday cake to The Bowery.
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