SAATCHI ONLINE MAGAZINE


DAILY NEWS, VIEWS, REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS
CRITICS' PICKS, OPENINGS, YOUR VIDEOS, YOUR BLOGS

 
ANTHONY HADEN-GUEST'S TOP 10 SHOWS OF 2008
hadenguest.jpg
ANTHONY HADEN-GUEST a writer, reporter and cartoonist who writes regularly for Saatchi Online's magazine, as well as for Esquire, GQ (UK) the Guardian and Britain's Observer Magazine.


Louise Bourgeois at the New York Guggenheim
Compelling, at once various and consistent, and more than a bit disturbing.


Ilya Kabakov at Winzavod, Moscow
A twofer! Looking at The Flies is as intricate an experience as reading Borges and The Toilet must be one of the greatest installations ever made, profoundly melancholy but suggesting survival, so a sort of hope. Elsewhere in Moscow is the work Ilya and Emilia Kabakov worked on together.


Eduardo Paolozzi at Flowers East, London
Reintroducing this great British post-war artist - Lawrence Alloway coined the phrase "Pop art" for Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton - through a suite of prints, Moonstrip Empire News.


Cao Fei at the Serpentine, London
This Chinese woman artist has used the Second Life program to build RMB City, an interactive utopia on the Web.


Vilhelm Hammershoi at London's Royal Academy
Domestic bourgeois stillness. Vermeer with hints of Magritte. This is how life must have felt before 24/7 "entertainment."


Martha Colburn's Myth Labs 2008 at James Cohan, New York
Colburn makes animated movies. In this one, she takes us on a pell-mell All American journey from Puritan fanaticism to meth addiction, using her own drawings, cut-outs, puppets and much else.


Who's Afraid of Jasper Johns? at Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York
Art gobbles up, attacks and piggy-backs on other art in this show that Gavin Brown and Urs Fischer put on at New York's Tony Shafrazi gallery. I was irritated, then seduced. Picabia would have loved it.


David Hammons at David Zwirner, New York
It is wonderfully typical that Hammons - truly the TE Lawrence of the art world for the way he backs into the limelight - should have been angered by this "unofficial" but thoughtful, deeply felt show.


Tim Noble and Sue Webster at Deitch Projects, New York
Bright lights, shadowland. Entrancing.


Bacon & Giacometti at Gagosian, Madison Avenue, New York
Unexpected and remarkable. I had seen each of these artists as a stand-alone master, a Company of One. This double show pumps up the volume.

 
Published on 18-12-2008
 
click here to go back to magazine home  |  click here to post a comment on this entry