ANA FINEL HONIGMAN regular correspondent for Saatchi Online's magazine and contributor to Artforum.com, Art in America, TANK, Dazed & Confused, Sleek and British Vogue.
Dan Attoe at Peres Projects, Berlin
The show that most made me feel the pain of being a poor critic was Dan Attoe's 'Simple Thoughts and Complicated Animals' at Peres Projects. His work breaks my heart. Even without the viciously funny yet sometimes poignant captions and descriptive phrases that he pencils inside, alongside, and on the reverse of his oil paintings, his art has the emotional subtlety and narrative complexity of a haunting short story. I feel like I could spend years looking at one of his paintings, do little else, but still feel intellectually and emotionally fed.
OSSIAN WARD is Visual Arts Editor for Time Out London and a writer on contemporary art. Formerly editor of ArtReview and the V&A magazine, he has worked at The Art Newspaper and edited The Artists‚ Yearbook, a biennial publication by Thames & Hudson.
From Russia at Royal Academy, London
With all the Anglo-Russian drama as preamble, Norman Rosenthal's swan song didn't disappoint curatorially, with a wealth of good French crowd-pleasers completely trounced by the awesome Malevich full stops.
Street Art at Tate Modern, London
Some welcome recognition for a much beleaguered art form, emblazoned impressively across the brick facade of Bankside, yet without the fuss of Banksy.
Peter Doig at Tate Britain, London
An overstuffed and over-hyped show perhaps, but Doig was a worthy candidate for serious retrospective treatment with some glimmers of hope for his future Trinidadian work too.
Marcel Broodthaers at Milton Keynes Gallery, Milton Keynes
A below-radar sleeper hit, introducing his marvellous Museum of Modern Art parody in the sand. No one did metonymic slippage like this old Belgian waffler.
Loris Greaud at Palais de Tokyo, Paris
An ambitious undertaking of sci-art and musical collaborations that didn't always hit the mark (why the paintballers?), but infinitely more interesting than his ICA debut in London.
Gustave Courbet at Grand Palais, Paris
This couldn't have been staged anywhere else, but Paris and Courbet proved worthy of their claims as the begetters of modern art.
Charles Avery at Parasol Unit, London
Thanks mainly to the great publication, Avery's weird parallel universe began to take real shape this year, with a more sustained showing needed to get into his headspace.
Liverpool Biennial
Perhaps geed up by general Capital of Cultureness, most of this felt like a real international biennial, with no more excuses of regionalistic disinterest to cloud some great shows.
Robin Rhode at Hayward Gallery, London
Another great bridge between the forms of street and high art, helped along because Rhode is riding his own chalk-drawn wave of success right now.
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