I happened to be talking to someone who works at one of the cultural institutions due to receive a slice of £10 million of BP’s money over the next five years. She was very pleased at the news, perhaps unsurprisingly, since this is her career and I imagine she’s passionate about it and about art itself. I alluded to the litany of concerns I have at the way BP is doing irreparable damage to the planet on so many levels.

"Well, find us another sponsor, and..."

"We’ll have to work together to make that happen," I replied, quickly, as she was getting off the bus.

Somehow this brief conversation managed to dishearten me more than the BP deal itself, news of which had filtered out of the British Museum much earlier that day. The British Museum is regarded, it seems, by BP as its private playground, where esteemed allies, possible collaborators, and lucky employees can gather, usually of an evening, to sink a glass or two of something elegant and fizzy, surrounded by treasures (possibly looted, possibly saved) of once mighty empires. This state of affairs is perhaps regarded wearily by some museum employees as an inevitable symptom of the neoliberalisation of culture, one that leaves a once bitter, but soon deadening aftertaste.

I live in a city, a country, a culture whose roots reach deep into exploitation and destruction: the seizing of land, the creation of brutalising empires (once national, now corporate), and the remorseless theft of resources. As so many supporters of oil sponsorship remind those of us who are deeply troubled by it (and by what it allows to continue), we are all compromised by fossil fuels, as well as capitalism itself. We’re likely to use more than our planetary share of fossil fuels, and are quite possibly basing a relatively privileged lifestyle on the suffering of others, perhaps nearby but more commonly on distant continents where the predominant skin colour is not white.

It’s important to be aware of these distressing truths, and even more important to act wherever we can to dismantle whatever privilege we may have, and of course to keep cutting the carbon. But complicity should never be taken as a compelling reason to stay away from the issues, safely cocooned in a hypocrisy-free bubble. If we left the protection of the planet and the struggle for the liberation of everything that lives to carbon-footprintless hermits living in their proverbial cave, the future would be looking far darker than it already does. And it does look dark, dammit.

Harking back to that conversation with the cultural worker, it strikes me that she may have found the Deepwater Horizon disaster as achingly distressing as I did. I made a conscious effort some time ago to turn my gaze away from those oiled seabirds whenever I could, even though images of them are plastered all over the Internet. Just the echo of knowing they were out there was enough motivation to spend at least some of my time doing this work. But I share the same desire as that of so many of my fellow Londoners to turn away from what is troubling, and to seek solace — ah, the irony! — in the arts, particularly the arts that may be politicised but still manage to offer a good escape. Stolen hours hollering with guitar or piano provide a canvas on which to pour out the despair, personal and planetary (I’ve lost the ability to tell the difference!), and sometimes even to alchemise it into something approaching joy.

Where I may differ from my fleeting cultural acquaintance is in a stubborn refusal to completely ditch the belief that not only is collective action necessary, but that it’s distinctly possible. Once, she may have stood on the streets and added her voice to those of so many others opposing war or injustice — but that was what seems like a lifetime ago. Maybe those acts of altruism and possibility were dashed, for myriad oft-delineated reasons, and now perhaps she has good reason to have abandoned belief in anything other than treating her loved ones lovingly, doing her work thoughtfully, and casting a jaundiced glance as little as she can bear at the bleak old world as it whirls onward.

I used to think that the vast and increasing distance between the ecocidal actions of BP et al. and their shiny rhetoric gave us an unparalleled opportunity to expose their psychopathic nature. But now I think most of us already have a strong sense of the deep seam of amorality that runs through such entities. The key is to allow the anger and sometimes unbearable sadness triggered by that knowledge to transform itself into strategic action that is always also from the heart. The alternative seems to be a steady diet of despair and self-medication.

Sometimes people afflicted by this overwhelming sense of disappointment, whose dreams seem dry, seek to drain those of others who still carry them. I have no idea if that’s the case from my brief interaction with this one person. At the end of our brief exchange, I tried, clumsily, to touch on the prospect of an alliance between insider and outsider, not having the time to add that "after all, we’re all in this together, breathing the same air," etc.

Such an alliance needs to comprise those working within these sponsored institutions, and all the people outside them who see them as a barometer of our society, with a move to a "culture beyond oil" allowing societal reappraisal of our relationship to fossil fuels (and corporations themselves). It also means, crucially, the participation of artists themselves. If we can all gather what’s left of our hope, or — more easily? — reach deep and reconnect with our interconnectness to whatever lives, we might build a beautiful alliance that refuses to accept the inevitability of the commodification of art, people, and life itself. From the outside we could provide solidarity for those within these institutions who might be risking their livelihoods by sticking their necks out, and we could do the same for artists who turn away from tainted art prizes out of principle. All of us could insist that public money — of which there is so much, but so much misuse — is directed into essential services, of which art is most certainly one.

These exhortations are of course ambitious to the point of grandiosity, but they remain possible. What stands between them and their realisation is only our incapacity to cultivate a sense deep within us that our fellows care as much as we do, and might be prepared to sink a little time and love into bringing them to pass.

Sam Chase is an inveterate ivory worrier, irregular street hollerer, sometime Occupier, and regular volunteer for the group Art Not Oil.

Reporting €127 million ($166 million) in sales in 2011, Artcurial is still in the shadow of those great beasts Christie's and Sotheby's, with €199 million ($260 million) and €190 million ($249 million) in sales in France in 2011, respectively. But Artcurial boasts the highest sales of the France-based auction houses, and posted its best results ever this year, citing a 23 percent increase in sales figures in 2011, with 17,800 lots sold. The firm was founded in 2001, after France passed a law that opened up the auction market to new companies, an even which also allowed Sotheby's and Christie's to hang out their shingles in the country.

In 2011, Artcurial sold seven works that passed the million-euro mark ($1.4 million), including Nicolas de Staël's "Nu Couché" ("Reclining Nude"), €7,030,000 ($9.4 million), a world auction record for the artist; Lyonel Feininger's "Hafen von Swinemünde" ("Port of Swinemünde"), €5,775,000 ($8.2 million); Jean-Michel Basquiat's "Santo," €2,634,800 ($3.5 million), a record for a European sale of the artist's work; Jean Prouvé's "Structure Nomade," €1,830,400 ($2.5 million); and Jacques Majorelle's "Le Kasbah Rouge," €1,315,800 ($1.9 million), a world auction record for the artist. The company has hired Jiayi Li, formerly of the Marlborough Gallery, to intensify its presence in China in 2012. The firm also has offices in Milan and Brussels.

The art market is "a very small niche, but it benefits from a very important audience," Artcurial co-president Francis Briest said at a recent presentation about the company's year-end results. "It's a market of seduction.... Our sales are guided by the objects, the rare works of art, that are sought out like a hunt for truffles." Artcurial was the first French auction house to sell comic books, according to co-president François Tajan. "Wine and collectible cars are also different entrance doors for new clients," Tajan added. The auction house is also known for its Hermès vintage sale, in which nostalgic grandmothers looking for classic scarves rub elbows with buyers for billionaire collectors.

While the financial crisis has affected many sectors in France and worldwide, the art market has remained strong. Paris, naturally, is the center of the French auction world, although, interestingly, Toulouse was the location of the two most expensive items sold at auction in France this year, both at sales run by provincial auction houses: a Qianlong scroll sold by auctioneer Marc Labarbe fetched €22,057,760 ($31.2 million) and a Qianlong seal achieved €12,393,000 ($17.5 million) at a sale by the firm of Chassaing-Marambat.

Over the arc of “Work of Art,” we watched Young Sun Han and Sarah Jimenez grow as artists, an evolution which was never more apparent than it was in the final show. Super-controlling Young granted himself some release from his anal ways and put himself into his work. Sarah J moved away from morbid watercolors and into other media: morbid sculptures, morbid installations, morbid performance pieces, etc., for one stunning final show. The two came so close to being crowned "next great artist" — but fell just short as the judges passed them over for Kymia Nawabi. We caught up with the two honorable mentions to chat about life after reality TV and what exactly was on China Chow’s head during that finale episode.

So, what did you guys have planned for the finale?

YS: I organized my local gay bar, Big Chicks, and got all my friends together. I’m still recovering.

SJ: I’m in D.C. right now and I just watched it with my family. No big party. They were at the final exhibition, so we just got to watch it over again.

And what did you and your friends think of the final outcome?

YS: All of your loved ones want you to win and everything, but they saw I was very legitimately happy that Kymia won and thought that she deserved it.

SJ: I think Kymia and Young did amazing exhibitions. During the show I thought it would be a toss up between me and Kymia, but I really think all three of us put in a tremendous effort the best that we could, especially Young putting out such a vulnerable part of his life.

It was very brave of you guys to put yourselves on display this way, but you also shared a lot of really intimate details about your families and other people close to you. How did being on this show affect them?

YS: I almost didn’t do the show just because a couple of weeks before we were set to film, my mom almost passed away. There was a lot of drama around that but I’m glad I did the show because she was able to look forward to it every week and I've been watching it with her and my grandma. It’s definitely kind of tied our family closer together. It was pretty special.

SJ: I was very nervous about my family and how my mom and dad would perceive the kids challenge [where I talked about their divorce]. I called them before the episode aired and I let them know this piece brought up a lot of feelings for me. I wanted to tell them that I love them, and I know they support me, and I'm not sure how it's going to air on TV. They were understanding and forgiving about it.

There are clips of Simon de Pury talking about his DJ gigs. Is he actually the coolest person ever?

SJ: If you Google him, he has videos on YouTube where he’s hip-hopping. He has songs about himself being an auctioneer. He’s singing them! And they’re to hip hop beats! He’s amazing. 

YS: Simon has so much life and personality. He’s just so honest and open, and even when the cameras aren’t rolling he’ll be giving you advice or asking about your family. He’s a real, genuine, interesting, puzzling man.

I noticed a lot of the contestants are still waiting tables, nannying, or living with their parents post-show. Was the money your major driving factor here? Is everybody still struggling?

SJ: I knew that if I completely focused on the prize and the money, it would completely interrupt my creative process and I would make work that was inauthentic. For me, the question was, how do I make work that I'm proud of and that pushes myself to new heights, as opposed to focusing on the money — although it was in the back of my mind.

YS: You have to make compromises to make it work for you, whether it's working crazy hours, living with parents, getting ten roommates. People who want to be artists find a way because they need to. The economic opportunities for artists are different from other professions.

After you won that huge cash prize, Young, did you end up taking your mom to Korea?

YS: I haven’t gotten my money yet! But once I do we’ll be taking a really fantastic trip for sure.

You guys spent a lot of time in front of the cameras, sometimes not while you were at your best. Was there anything that happened during filming you were not looking forward to seeing yourself do? Sarah, for example, you drew a lot of your work from very personal, private experiences you ended up revealing on national TV. 

SJ: When I'm in that state of heightened emotion, I just go to what is true for me, rather than wondered what it’s going to look like on TV, although it was uncomfortable watching it on TV. At the time I didn’t really think about it. I thought about how my experiences aren’t unique. They're very common to other people, and maybe someone else could identify with them.

That's not the only time you did that, you know. 

YS: No, its not, but during the street art challenge they were very practical as far as getting up on scaffolding and staying cool. But during the sell out challenge it was about... putting your ass out there.

Did anyone else feel that the final crit was a total Jerry and Bill disagreeathon?

SJ: I really felt like Bill played devil's advocate a lot. That was his style of critiquing. I mean, there were definitely multiple points where the judges disagreed on many things. In the final episode I felt like Jerry and Bill had different opinions about the art, which I think they enjoyed as criticis. They enjoyed that critical banter around artwork.

Can we just end by talking about China’s fashion for a second?

YS: You know, she has a very eclectic style but strong sense of couture sensibility, very avant-garde in a way without being too showy or brassy. It’s kind of like Lady Gaga turned down five notches. She does dress for fashion and for art, not for the attention of men or to look sexy, which would be very easy for her to do. I loved her little acorn tophat she wore. And her googly eyed Chanel dress for the finale and her Bjork braids. Like Bjork meets Swiss milkmaid. 

Name: Santa Claus
Age: Let's just say I’m not younger than Jesus.
Occupation: Artist
City/Neighborhood: Lapland, Finland

What project are you working on now? I’ve got a worldwide project underway... not at Gagosian, however. Ho ho ho.

What's the last show that you saw? Marina Abramovic’s “The Artist Is Present.” Get it? "Present"?

What's the last show that surprised you? Why? I thought Laurel Nakadate’s show at MoMA PS1 was going to be naughtier than it was. She actually still gets a present this year.

What's your favorite place to see art? In collectors’ houses, while they’re sleeping.

Do you make a living off your art? Yes.

What's the most indispensable item in your studio? Elves.

Where are you finding ideas for your work these days? The melting glaciers up here are harrowing. It’s inspired me to stop giving out coal — bad for the environment.

Do you collect anything? Vintage Coca Cola memorabilia.

What's the last artwork you purchased? Tino Sehgal’s “Hey Everybody It’s Christmas and We’re in an Art Gallery!”

What's the weirdest thing you ever saw happen in a museum or gallery? Well, once I was delivering a gift to the director of the Fennimore Art Museum when Blitzen stepped on “Sugaring Off” from 1945. That’s right, a Grandma Moses got run over by a reindeer.  

What's your art-world pet peeve? Gift bags at galas. I dislike competition.

What's your favorite post-gallery watering hole or restaurant? Santos Party House. I have to admit I think the name is pretty silly, but it’s a great place to get crunk.

Do you have a gallery/museum-going routine? I usually like to swing through pretty quickly and discreetly.

Know any good jokes? Don’t waste my time with stupid questions.

What's the last great book you read? “Humboldt’s Gift,” by my favorite Jewish author, Saul Bellow.

What work of art do you wish you owned? Géricault’s “The Raft of the Medusa.” It would really fit my decor.

What would you do to get it? I’m going to get it.

What under-appreciated artist, gallery, or work do you think people should know about? Thomas Nast.

Who's your favorite living artist? Paul McCarthy. He really gets me.

What are your hobbies? Philanthropy.

It is our conviction that the people with the best eye for emerging artistic talent are other artists. So for this issue we asked the generous and discerning individuals below, all of whom are well established in their careers, which younger or underappreciated artists they have been watching. The list that follows — broad, international, and distinguished by the variety of approaches represented — contains their choices.

With thanks to: Daniel Arsham, Olaf Breuning, Adam Chodzko, Alexandre Da Cunha, Folkert De Jong, Daniel Dewar, Doug Fishbone, Zipora Fried, Simon Fujiwara, Orly Genger, Ragnar Kjartansson, Liz Magic Laser, Glenn Ligon, Kalup Linzy, Hew Locke, Melissa Logan, Robert Longo, Andrew Mania, Eddie Martinez, Ryan McGinness, Haroon Mirza, Sarah Morris, Wangechi Mutu, Rivane Neuenschwander, Adam Pendleton, Zineb Sedira, Erin Shirreff, Haim Steinbach, Corban Walker, Chuck Webster, Sue Williamson, B. Wurtz, Akram Zaatari, Andrea Zittel

Click the accompanying slide show to see the first installment of Modern Painters magazine's survey of 100 up-and-coming talents, listed alphabetically from A to Z.

Dead white males, you're on notice. Women artists may still be a minority in museum collections and major exhibitions, but that's changing — and art-world women exerted more influence than ever on this year's headlines. The Venice Biennale, also known as the art-world Olympics, was curated by a woman, as was the American pavilion. A female MoMA curator rehung the institution's galleries to give more space to underrecognized women artists. One woman named Marni Kotak actually gave birth inside a gallery, executing the most quintessentially female performance imaginable.

While not all contributions were necessarily positive, or even entirely serious (see: Kotak, Marni), it seems worthwhile to look back on the year through the lens of the women who defined it. Our list (presented in no particular order) leaves out perennial powerhouses like Sotheby's Lisa Dennison or dealers Mary Boone and Marian Goodman in favor of the ladies who made waves this year in particular — for reasons both quirky and compelling, fair and foul. 

Click the slideshow above to see the women who shook up the art world in 2011

The end of the year is here. Looking back at the list of ARTINFO's 100 most popular stories, it's clear that we covered a lot of ground, from the creative ferment accompanying the Mideast's uprisings to the major developments in the contemporary art world. But are there any lessons to be learned from what our readers responded to the most?

Well, one lesson is this: a big story is a big story. And whether it was Marina Abramovic's controversial L.A. MOCA gala (#1 and #4) or Bob Dylan's strange plagiarism of a random Flickr account (#6 and #25), one big story begat another.

As for specific names, the ones that come back again and again are pretty much the ones you would expect: Ai Weiwei, for his zodiac heads installation (#49), his post-detention foray into Google Plus (#85), and for his general righteousness (#98); Damien Hirst, for his yet-to-launch global spot-painting show (#52 and #56); Jeff Koons, for his copyright woes (#51) and his sensationally porny "Made in Heaven" works (#57); and Banksy, for his offer to fund free admission to "Art in the Streets" in L.A. (#28) and his advocacy for the Russian anarchists in Voina (#91), whose antics also make repeat appearances on our list (#36). Marina Abramovic has clearly ascended to the first ranks of newsmakers — in addition to the uproar over her dubious MOCA gala, her name drew people to an article about a video game based on her "The Artist Is Present" staring contest performance (#58).

Besides these artists, other names recur. Multitasking actor and artist wannabe James Franco was the subject of some musings on how his love of contemporary art "ruined" the Oscars (#35), as well as news stories about his aborted attempt to participate in the Venice Biennale (#37) and his show at artist Terence Koh's ASS space (#99). More dubiously, Lindsay Lohan was one of the big draws, seeking attention via some gory fashion photos by Tyler Shields (#32) and in a weird film by the painter Richard Phillips (#86).

Gagosian was the most-talked-about gallery by far, naturally. In addition to the dealer's Dylan and Hirst shows, his London gallery's Murakami exhibition drew a lot of eyeballs (#8), while he faced lawsuits over Richard Prince's appropriation of rasta works by Patrick Cariou (#20) and some fallout from a weird act of police brutality last year at an Anselm Kiefer show (#61). He was also just put under general scrutiny by a profile that unearthed some gossipy details of his now-global empire (#34). Also drawing lots of attention was art maven Dasha Zhukova, interviewed about her new Garage magazine (#68), mobbed for her wild Venice Biennale party (#78), and also just generally scrutinized in a substantial Art + Auction profile (#47).

It's clear that what matters our readers was, above all, business as usual. That is, by far the largest number of stories on the list are nuts-and-bolts reports of the big-tent global art events. These include the major auctions (#2, #48, #77, #84), the big art fairs like the Armory Show (#22), Art Basel (#44), Art Basel Miami Beach (#42 and #69), or Frieze (#76 and #90), and of course this year's Venice Biennale (#14, #19, #40).

As it turns out, what people found fascinating on ARTINFO often had some relation to what people on the Internet find fascinating in general. The big draw of multiple stories proved to be animals — be they dogs (#9), cats (#10), or monkeys (#60) — and sex, in such stories as adult actress Sasha Grey's attempt to make herself over as a conceptual photographer (#11), controversy over porn art on the Lower East Side (#30), and the attempted auction of a clip of of Marilyn Monroe in flagrante delicto (#65). (But then again, you never know what the Internet will like. We're not certain why a crazy watch was our fifth biggest story of the year — although it is quite a watch!) Monroe, incidentally, was up there with Abramovic as one of the year's big newsmakers: she also featured in another of our big stories, about Seward Johnson's towering and awful Chicago sculpture of the actress with her dress flying up (#13). 

Yet in the end, it is also just heartening to see that there is room at the top for smart things or quirky items. Among ARTINFO's big hits of the year were a look at the Willem de Kooning retrospective at MoMA (#26) and a wide-ranging interview with Richard Serra (#75), as well as think pieces about the rise of online galleries (#50), the "ascent of the art advisor" (#70), and the state of contemporary art criticism (#67). Also up there were our goofy Valentine's Day "Love List" of art power couples (#15) and our round-up of "great pranks in art history" for April Fool's Day (#63).

For your reading pleasure, here is the complete list of our top 100 stories of the year. Enjoy the memories!

1) An Open Letter From a Dancer Who Refused to Participate in Marina Abramovic’s MOCA Performance, by Sarah Wookey, November 23, 2011

2) Ben Stiller and David Zwirner Exult as Christie's Star-Packed "Artists for Haiti" Sale Tops $13 Million, by Judd Tully, September 25, 2011

3) Think Different: Why Steve Jobs Doesn't Deserve Your Tears, by Ben Davis, October 11, 2011

4) Yvonne Rainer Denounces Marina Abramovic's Planned MOCA Gala Performance as "Grotesque," by Julia Halperin, November 11, 2011

5) Is This the World's Most Incomprehensible Watch?, Janelle Zara, November 7, 2011

6) Did Bob Dylan Rip Off Classic Photos for His Gagosian Show? See the Evidence, by Ann Binlot, September 28, 2011

7) Carlos Slim's Museo Soumaya: Money Can't Buy Taste, by Benjamin Genocchio, April 12, 2011

8) Oversized and Oversexed, Murakami Mines the Past With Racy New Gagosian Show in London, by Coline Milliard, July 6, 2011

9) Photographer Charlotte Dumas Tells the Story Behind Her Portraits of 9/11 Rescue Dogs, by Michael Slenske, September 14, 2011

10) Is This Cat a Great Photographer?: Meet Cooper, the Seattle Art Scene's Feline Phenomenon, by Emma Allen, May 18, 2011

11) Porn As Performance Art?: Sasha Grey Releases "Neu Sex," Her First Book of Art Photography, by Scott Indrisek, March 29, 2011

12) The Purloined Warhol?: Missing $30 Million Farrah Fawcett Portrait Discovered on Ryan O'Neal's Wall... On His Reality Show, by Julia Halperin, June 27, 2011

13) What's Wrong With Chicago's Giant New Marilyn Monroe Sculpture? Pretty Much Everything, by Ben Davis, July 19, 2011

14) Venice Biennale Releases Artist List for 2011 "ILLUMInations" Exhibition, by Ben Davis, May 27, 2011

15) The Love List: Power Couples of the Art World, by ARTINFO, February 15, 2011

16) Space Invader Becomes First Artist Arrested for MOCA's "Art in the Streets," by Ben Davis, April 22, 2011

17) No Friend of the Nude: A Blushing Facebook Wages a Campaign Against Courbet and Au Naturale Art, by Ben Davis, February 24, 2011

18) Spooky Long-Lost Da Vinci Painting Hailed as $200 Million Masterpiece, by Andrew M. Goldstein, July 1, 2011

19) ARTINFO's Comprehensive Guide to the 2011 Venice Biennale National Pavilions, by ARTINFO, August 2, 2011

20) French Photographer Patrick Cariou on His Copyright Suit Victory Against Richard Prince and Gagosian, by Andrew M. Goldstein, March 22, 2011

21) Hmm, These Planned Korean Skyscrapers Look a Lot Like the Twin Towers Exploding, by Janelle Zara, December 12, 2011

22) The Nine Best (and Five Worst) Booths of Armory Show 2011, by ARTINFO, March 4, 2011

23) EU Plans Largest-Ever Arts Funding Program, Pinning Economic Hopes on Culture Industry, by Alexander Forbes, November 23, 2011

24) A Virtual Mega-Museum: Google Art Project Launches With Masterpieces from the Tate, MoMA, and Beyond, by ARTINFO, February 10, 2011

25) Bob Dylan Shanghaied My Flickr!: Meet the Rare Asian Photo Collector Whose Pictures Are Now on Gagosian's Walls, by Ann Binlot, October 14, 2011

26) Take a Virtual Tour of MoMA's Radical De Kooning Retrospective, by Kyle Chayka, September 19, 2011

27) Vagina Art Veiled at Azerbaijan's Venice Biennale Pavilion, Causing Some to Cry Censorship, by Kate Deimling, June 8, 2011

28) Banksy's Latest Surprise Move: Free Tickets for All to L.A. MOCA's "Art in the Streets," by Ben Davis, June 10, 2011

29) The 10 Craziest Things About the $900 Million Michael Jackson Art Feud, by Ashton Cooper, July 12, 2011

30) No Nudes, Nu?: Orthodox Community Clashes With LES Gallerist Over XXX Art, by Julia Halperin, March 11, 2011

31) Michael Jackson's Sprawling Artist Studio and Art Collection Revealed in an L.A. Airport Hangar, by Ann Binlot, August 18, 2011

32) What's Lindsay Lohan Doing With That Knife?: A Q&A With Tyler Shields, Young Hollywood's Hottest and Most Twisted Photographer, by Ann Binlot, August 12, 2011

33) Capitalism, Unclothed: Art Provocateur Zefrey Throwell on Overthrowing Wall Street With His "Naked Army," by Kyle Chayka, August 2, 2011

34) The Gagosian Explosion: A Critical Breakdown of the Wall Street Journal's Opus on the Controversial Megadealer's Global Dominance, by Andrew M. Goldstein, April 4, 2011

35) James Franco's Erased Oscar Hosting Gig, by Ben Davis, March 10, 2011

36) Police-Baiting Penis Graffiti by Radical Voina Collective Wins $14K Russian "Innovation" Prize, by ARTINFO, April 8, 2011

37) James Franco to Bring His Obsession With James Dean to the Venice Biennale, by Emma Allen, May 13, 2011

38) Polish Contemporary Art Shows Off Its Fantastic Side at Brussels' Palais des Beaux-Arts, by Nicolai Hartvig (ARTINFO France), July 2011

39) Did Ryan McGinley Rip Off Photographer Janine "Jah Jah" Gordon? See the Evidence and Decide for Yourself, Kyle Chayka, July 15, 2011

40) The Nine Best National Pavilions at the Venice Biennale, by ARTINFO, June 6, 2011

41) "Design Is a Process of Rebirth": Michael Arad on the Making of the 9/11 Memorial, by Andrew M. Goldstein, September 13, 2011

42) 10 Parties You Wish You Could Get Into During Art Basel Miami Beach, by Ann Binlot, November 22, 2011

43) Blast Off! Norman Foster Unveils His Launchpad for Richard Branson's $200,000-a-Flight Virgin Galactic Spaceline, by Janelle Zara, October 20, 2011

45) The Many Faces of Cindy Sherman: The Self-Portrait Artist Launches Makeup Line With MAC Cosmetics, by Ann Binlot, August 3, 2011

46) As MOCA Gears Up for "Art in the Streets," L.A. Smears Street Art With War on Graffiti Star, by Ben Davis, March 23, 2011

47) All Eyes on Her, by Sarah Douglas, June 1, 2011

48) A Chinese Vase Estimated at $800 Sells for a Staggering $18 Million at Sotheby's, by Judd Tully, March 24, 2011

49) Ai Weiwei Unleashes Animals of the Zodiac on Central Park for His First Public Art Project, by ARTINFO, March 12, 2011

50) Forget Chelsea The Most Cutting-Edge Gallery Spaces Are Opening Online, by Kyle Chayka, September 19, 2011

51) Copyrights and Copy Wrongs: Learning from the Legal Precedents Set by Jeff Koons, Shepard Fairey, and Others, by Emma Allen, March 23, 2011

52) Connecting the Dots: Details Emerge About Damien Hirst's Insane Global "Spot" Painting Show, by Julia Halperin, December 12, 2011

53) Stealing the Mona Lisa: A Minute-by-Minute Account of the World's Most Famous Art Theft, A Century After the Fact, by Noah Charney, August 19, 2011

54) The Da Vinci of Design: 7 Ways Steve Jobs Changed the Visual Arts Forever (And One Way He Didn't), by ARTINFO, October 6, 2011

55) Wipeout!: Denim Company Must Pay Photographer $100,000 For Appropriating Sexy Surfer Pic, by ARTINFO, August 30, 2011

56) To Kick Off the Year of Damien Hirst, Gagosian Will Blanket the World With the Artist's Spot Paintings, by Shane Ferro, August 5, 2011

57) Jeff Koons and the Crisis of the Sexual Object, by Ben Davis, January 21, 20011

58) Marina Abramovic's "The Artist is Present" Performance Becomes an Infuriating Video Game, by Kyle Chayka, September 19, 2011

59) Meet Anne Sinclair, the Art-World Scion by Dominique Strauss-Kahn's Side, by Kate Deimling, May 20, 2011

60) Could the Cindy Sherman of Monkeys Accidentally Revolutionize Copyright Law for Artists?, Ben Davis, July 15, 2011

61) Woman Drags Gagosian to Court in Police Brutality Suit on Eve of James Franco Show, by Andrew M. Goldstein, February 24, 2011

62) The New Egyptian Government Can't Fire Zahi Hawass — Because He Quits, by ARTINFO, March 4, 2011

63) The 8 Greatest Pranks in Art History, by ARTINFO, April 1, 2011

64) The Local Element: Inside the Seattle Home of Art Collectors John and Shari Behnke, by Meghan Dailey, August 16, 2011

65) The 8mm Itch? Alleged Marilyn Monroe Sex Tape to be Auctioned in Argentina, Shane Ferro, July 22, 2011 

66) $20 Million Walmart Gift Makes Crystal Bridges Museum Free for Visitors, Forever, by Kyle Chayka, August 2, 2011

67) Total Eclipse of the Art: The Rise of Art News and the Crisis of Art Criticism, by Ben Davis, January 5, 2011

68) The Girl With the Butterfly Tattoo Cover: Dasha Zhukova on Her New Garage Magazine, by Andrew M. Goldstein, September 6, 2011

69) The Best and Worst of Art Basel Miami Beach 2011, by ARTINFO, December 2, 2011

70) The Ascent of the Art Advisor: 5 Things to Know About the Growing Taste-for-Hire Industry, by Shane Ferro, August 2, 2011

71) Attack of the Royal Wedding Art!: The Sexiest, Strangest, and Most Sickening Works Captivating the U.K., by Coline Milliard, April 25, 2011

72) 19 Questions for Art Critic and "Work of Art" Judge Jerry Saltz, by ARTINFO, November 4, 2011

73) Multimillion-Dollar Hoard of Renaissance and Modern Art Found in Polish Outhouse, by Kyle Chayka, September 28, 2011

74) Hans Ulrich Obrist on His New Art Movement, "Posthastism," by Coline Milliard, November 11, 2011

75) Draw It Black: A Q&A With Richard Serra on His Daring New Retrospective at the Met, by Andrew M. Goldstein, April 18, 2011

76) Big Sales Are Sparse at the Frieze Art Fair as Collectors Opt to Socialize and Window Shop, by Coline Milliard, October 20, 2011

77) At Sotheby's London, Richter, Warhol, and Munoz Fetch Millions in "Orgy of the Rich," by Judd Tully, February 16, 2011

78) Stampede of the Glitterati: Stars Swarm Dasha Zhukova's "Commercial Break" Party at the Bauer Hotel, by ARTINFO, June 3, 2011

79) Did Art Dealer Guy Wildenstein Gather a Multimillion-Dollar Cache of Stolen Art?, by ARTINFO, February 4, 2011

80) Lucian Freud, Painter of Radical Realism, Dies at 88, by ARTINFO, July 21, 2011

81) The Wild and Woolly World of Yarn Bombing, Street Art's Soft Sensation, by Ashton Cooper, June 10, 2011

82) Cy Twombly, Reclusive Legend of Modernist Painting, Dies at 83, by Julia Halperin, July 8, 2011

83) Graffiti Brawl: Kenny Scharf Fights Back After His Houston Street Mural Is Defaced, by Judd Tully, January 10, 2011

84) Art School Exercise Mistaken for Classic Chinese Painting Sells for $11.4 Million at Auction, by Madeleine O’Dea (ARTINFO China), September 19, 2011

85) Ai Weiwei Breaks Social Media Silence With New Google Plus Account, But Will it Last?, by Kyle Chayka, July 25, 2011

86) Lindsay Lohan Seeks Redemption at the Venice Biennale, by Ben Davis, June 4, 2011

87) Cash Is Auctioned as Art in Australia and Everyone Loses Money, by Shane Ferro, September 1, 2011

88) From the Palettes of Babes: 5 Prodigious Child Artists to Watch, by Julia Halperin, January 28, 2011

89) "Most of the Art World Wants Me to Commit Suicide": Photographer Nan Goldin on Her New Work and the Imposition of Being a Living Artist, by Coline Milliard (ARTINFO UK), June 24, 2011

90) The Ten Best (and One Worst) Booths at Frieze, by ARTINFO, October 13, 2011

91) Judge Rejects Banksy's Offer to Post Bail for Russian Activists, Citing the Artist's Anonymity, by Ben Davis, January 19, 2011

92) Chugging for Art's Sake: The Drunken Insanity of Scope's Frat-in-a-Box Performance, By the Numbers, by Julia Halperin, March 4, 2011

93) How Do Performance Artists Make Any Money? A Market Inquiry, by Shane Ferro, November 22, 2011

94) Bin Laden Group Plans to Build the World's Tallest Super Skyscraper in Jeddah, by Janelle Zara, August 5, 2011

95) WikiLeaks' Unrealized Project: What We Learned From Hans Ulrich Obrist's Epic Interview With Julian Assange, by Ben Davis, July 1, 2011

96) "I Want to Add Something Different to the Equation": Pilar Ordovas on Leaving Gagosian to Open a New London Gallery for "Classic Contemporary" Art, by Coline Milliard, July 27, 2011

97) Reclusive Art Maven Huguette Clark Emerges From the Shadows in Death, Finally Revealing Her Renoirs and Monets to the Public, by Julia Halperin, June 24, 2011

98) Ai Weiwei's Path From Cultural Prankster to Enemy of the State, by Ben Davis, May 2, 2011

99) James Franco Holds a Low-Key Art Opening in Terence Koh's ASS, by Ann Binlot, August 11, 2011

100) Walker on the Wild Side: Dan Bejar on His Musical Collaboration With Artist Kara Walker, by David Berkovits, January 14, 2011

It is our conviction that the people with the best eye for emerging artistic talent are other artists. So for this issue we asked the generous and discerning individuals below, all of whom are well established in their careers, which younger or underappreciated artists they have been watching. The list that follows — broad, international, and distinguished by the variety of approaches represented — contains their choices.

With thanks to: Daniel Arsham, Olaf Breuning, Adam Chodzko, Alexandre Da Cunha, Folkert De Jong, Daniel Dewar, Doug Fishbone, Zipora Fried, Simon Fujiwara, Orly Genger, Ragnar Kjartansson, Liz Magic Laser, Glenn Ligon, Kalup Linzy, Hew Locke, Melissa Logan, Robert Longo, Andrew Mania, Eddie Martinez, Ryan McGinness, Haroon Mirza, Sarah Morris, Wangechi Mutu, Rivane Neuenschwander, Adam Pendleton, Zineb Sedira, Erin Shirreff, Haim Steinbach, Corban Walker, Chuck Webster, Sue Williamson, B. Wurtz, Akram Zaatari, Andrea Zittel

Click the accompanying slide show to see the second installment of Modern Painters magazine's survey of 100 up-and-coming talents, listed alphabetically from A to Z.

SEE PART 1 OF 5

Rarely a week went by in 2011 without news of some auction record being set, especially during the fall season, when new notches were struck with Paul Bunyan-like efficiency. Due to this summer's Euro crisis, the volatile stock market, and historically low interest rates, many of the world's wealthiest scrambled to diversify their portfolios, ultimately benefiting the art and jewelry markets in the latter half of the year. Even celebrities like Jennifer Aniston and Leonardo DiCaprio were swept up by the glamor of the salesroom, buying art that is likely to mature in value better than most Hollywood careers. But 2011 can't be totally summed up as the year of alternative investments — it was also dominated by news of rapidly rising prices at Beijing auctions, and, of course, the glittering behemoth that was the Elizabeth Taylor sale bonanza at Christie's.

Click above to see a slide show of the year's top five auction highlights.

While 2011 has been another blockbuster year for most of the big auction houses, it was not without its hiccups. Collectors were discerning and passed on some star lots that were seen as having overly aggressive estimates. Just like the auction highlights, the flops were concentrated in the latter half of the year, paralleling some of the volatility seen in stock and bond markets over the last six months. Without further ado, ARTINFO brings you the five moments of 2011 the auction houses would most like to forget.

Click above to view a slide show of 2011 biggest auction flops.

It is our conviction that the people with the best eye for emerging artistic talent are other artists. So for this issue we asked the generous and discerning individuals below, all of whom are well established in their careers, which younger or underappreciated artists they have been watching. The list that follows — broad, international, and distinguished by the variety of approaches represented — contains their choices.

With thanks to: Daniel Arsham, Olaf Breuning, Adam Chodzko, Alexandre Da Cunha, Folkert De Jong, Daniel Dewar, Doug Fishbone, Zipora Fried, Simon Fujiwara, Orly Genger, Ragnar Kjartansson, Liz Magic Laser, Glenn Ligon, Kalup Linzy, Hew Locke, Melissa Logan, Robert Longo, Andrew Mania, Eddie Martinez, Ryan McGinness, Haroon Mirza, Sarah Morris, Wangechi Mutu, Rivane Neuenschwander, Adam Pendleton, Zineb Sedira, Erin Shirreff, Haim Steinbach, Corban Walker, Chuck Webster, Sue Williamson, B. Wurtz, Akram Zaatari, Andrea Zittel

Click the accompanying slide show to see the third installment of Modern Painters magazine's survey of 100 up-and-coming talents, listed alphabetically from A to Z.

SEE PART 1 OF 5

SEE PART 2 OF 5

It would be difficult to say that 2011 signified a full crossover success point for new media art, but this year certainly did see increasing momentum for mainstream awareness (both inside the art world and out) of art and artists that deal with new technologies, digital production, and the Internet. Here, ARTINFO looks at three trends that manifested themselves in 2011, and will continue to define new media art in 2012.

Online-Only Galleries

2011 was a banner year for online-only galleries, art spaces that only exist as Web sites. Working toward solving the problem of how to exhibit Internet art, these spaces showed this work in its native habitat: within the Internet browser. The British/Italian online gallery Bubblebyte.org ramped up its programming with killer exhibitions by Laurel Schwulst, Sara Ludy, and Nicolas Sassoon, and will celebrate its one-year anniversary this coming January. Fach & Asendorf gallery mounted a giddy GIF group show with “Friends” and has since rolled on with a solo presentation by Bill Miller.

Klaus Von Nichtssagend Gallery spun off an online-only component of its physical space with Klaus Gallery, helmed by artist and curator Duncan Malashock. The space has hosted two intriguing projects so far, but there’s plenty of room for development over the next year. Art Micro Patronage launched in November to provide a way for new media artists to crowdsource a (hopefully) stable living, while the VIP Art Fair plans another outing for February 2012 to put traditional galleries online. Rhizome expanded its interactive Artbase, developing a systematic framework for preserving digital art in a publicly accessible online venue.  

Mounting Exhibitions

This year also saw a series of high-profile exhibitions of new media and new media-related artists in internationally renowned art museums and galleries. Cory Arcangel’s full-floor “Pro Tools” retrospective at the Whitney was the first solo exhibition given to such a young artist since Bruce Nauman in 1973. Though the show largely ignored the artist’s iconic earlier digital work in favor of physical sculptures and prints, the show’s influence and impact on the new media community was clear. Video artist Ryan Trecartin may not work quite so much on YouTube as he used to, but his “Any Ever” at MoMA PS1 was another new media scenester extravaganza — the closing party featured installations and performances from the influential net fashion collective DIS Magazine. 

The Creative Time Tweets series further lionized social media art with a project by performance artist Man Bartlett, who continues to lead the emerging group of artists working with social networks as a medium. Pioneer of digital art Manfred Mohr put on a solo show at the technology-oriented bitforms gallery, signaling public recognition of his innovative work. "Notes on a New Nature" at 319 Scholes presented an exhaustively curated, intelligent, provocative, and fun look at the relationship between new media art and natural landscape that curators in 2012 will have a hard time topping.

Branding Opportunities

As generative artist Marius Watz (who recently worked with agency Scholz & Volkmer to create abstract background animations for Montblanc’s eyewear series) told ARTINFO earlier this year, “media art has the positive aspect of looking like the future,” an appealing quality for commercial industry. As the technology start-up scene heats up in New York with companies like FourSquare and the arty blogging platform Tumblr, some companies are treading into the territory of new media art. Canvas, led by 4chan founder Christopher Poole, echoes the remix culture of Dump.fm in its relentless rehashing of memes and Internet iconography. Mixel, created by former New York Times web designer Khoi Vinh, took a similar approach to the iPad.

2011 also saw the founding of OKFocus, a digital agency created by creative technologist Jonathan Vingiano and omnipresent Internet art wunderkind Ryder Ripps. The agency has created and styled Web sites, digital toys, and applications for Creative Time, MoMA PS1, and the New Museum, as well as Smirnoff, M.I.A., and Lipman Advertising. Their work crosses boundaries between the art world and the commercial in a manic, Pop-inflected way.  With big brands ever more willing to hire on teams of digital artists, the division between art and advertising will doubtless become more complex. 

By now, it’s fairly clear that the protester is the figure who truly defined the year (even Time magazine and Shepard Fairey agree), and it’s as true in the realm of culture as it is in politics. Even beyond the images produced by and of the Occupy Wall Street protesters — and there were many — we saw individuals blur the line between art and dissent. From his art to his Twitter feed to his interviews, artist Ai Weiwei — detained by the Chinese government in April and released after 80 days under “house arrest” — became an icon of dissent. In Russia, art collective Voina shut down a bridge with a police-baiting phallic graffiti, repeatedly evaded capture, and created a new mythology of the outlaw artist. But beyond these individual figures, broader issues with which the art world has wrestled for years only became more complex in 2011. Below, ARTINFO reflects on and revists the four problems that most captivated, concerned, and outraged you this year.

COPYRIGHT

Concerns about artistic copyright rippled through all corners of the art world in 2011, from the pristine walls of Gagosian Gallery to the wild realm of animal art. Not long after Gagosian artist Richard Prince filed to appeal a 2010 Manhattan district court ruling that found his “Canal Zone” series to have inappropriately borrowed from Patrick Cariou’s photographs of Jamaican Rastafarians, the gallery found itself in the midst of another copyright controversy. This time, it concerned music legend Bob Dylan, whose paintings, supposedly inspired by his own travels in Asia, turned out to be copies of several images from a photo collector’s public Flickr as well as a handful of copyrighted photographs. While the controversy was more embarrassing than it was illegal — no court papers were ever filed — other artists found themselves tied up in more costly disputes. Janine “Jah Jah” Gordon filed and lost a suit alleging photographer Ryan McGinley had relied too heavily on her proprietary photographs of hipster teens, while Jeff Koons’s lawyers sent a cease and desist letter to a San Francisco bookstore selling bookends that resembled the artists’s inflatable dog sculptures (Koons lost that quixotic battle as well). But it wasn't just balloon animals that got dragged into the scrum — a  particularly creative monkey who snatched a photographer's camera on an Indonesian animal preserve and began snapping self-portraits inspired a discussion about just who can own copyright, and under what circumstances.

Looking ahead to 2012, all this litigiousness may have a chilling effect (on human artists, that is). New York art lawyer Virginia Rutledge, who co-authored an amicus brief supporting Richard Prince’s appeal, said the suit has raised “a disturbing number of questions” from art-world figures over the legality of the appropriation art they buy, collect, or display, and that such anxieties are only becoming more and more common. Self-censorship, she told ARTINFO, is becoming “rampant.”

CENSORSHIP

What difference a year can make: in 2010, David Wojnarowicz’s film “A Fire in My Belly” — with its fleeting ants-on-a-crucifix scene — was pulled from an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery under pressure from congressional Republicans and religious Catholic groups. This year, when the same video (and, in fact, several more versions of it) were included in the same show at the Brooklyn Museum, dissent from the Brooklyn's Catholic Diocese was largely ignored. But acts of censorship — both high and low profile, online and off — remained a central concern in culture this year, and, like “A Fire in My Belly,” all of the offending works seemed to include at least one of the big three: sex, religion, politics.

Nudity riled up the execs at Facebook, who continued to censor images of paintings and drawings posted to the social networking site that left too little to the imagination — including Gustave Courbet’s famous provocation “The Origin of the World.” Overexposure also caused a rift in a Lower East Side neighborhood, home to both a community of Orthodox Jews as well as up-and-coming galleries. (A group of local Orthodox Jews called police on obscenity charges after Allegra LaViola Gallery mounted a show called “Pornucopia.”) Irreverent religious art led to the ousting of the founding director of the Sharjah Biennial and the removal of two works of art by Aidan Salakhova from the Azerbaijan pavilion at the Venice Biennale because of concern about their treatment of Islam. And, of course, anxiety over offensive politics led to the termination of the Lacoste art prize as well as the whitewashing of street artist Blu’s mural (depicting coffins draped with dollar bills) commissioned for MOCA’s “Art in the Streets” exhibition.

CLASS TENSION

Occupy Wall Street and its various cultural offshoots weren’t the only manifestation of class tension in 2011. In fact, the art world, so often a playground for the rich, became in many ways a symbol of the larger economic inequalities that outraged so many. A profoundly explicit illustration of this dynamic came this fall when Sotheby’s — and the office buildings and residences of Sotheby’s board members and major customers — were picketed by the auction house’s union art handlers, who have been locked out of their jobs since August in a protracted labor dispute.

The rise of museums devoted to private collections also reinforced the notion that art has become a symbol of the chasm between the richer-than-rich and the rest of the world. In March, Carlos Slim, the world’s wealthiest man, unveiled his Fernando Romero-designed Museo Soumaya in Mexico City (a region with an even more gaping gulf between rich and poor than New York City). Back inside the United States, Alice Walton, one of the nation’s richest women and heiress to the Walmart fortune, opened her polarizing Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas. The billion-dollar institution, funded with money from the Walton Family Foundation, drew impassioned criticism from writers including the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg and ARTINFO’s Ben Davis. (Walmart employees weren’t particularly thrilled with the development, either.) Others, however, like Felix Salmon and Judith Dobrzynski, defended Walton, arguing that many — if not most — great American museums were built by donations from  people who made their fortunes in low-wage businesses.

Even luxurious galas reserved for the inner-circle of art-world elite weren’t insulated from dialogue about economic inequality. Who could forget the ruckus surrounding Marina Abramovic’s plans for MOCA’s annual gala, which evolved into a larger discussion about the exploitation of performers?

ARTS FUNDING

Arts funding may come from local governments, but this year the issue proved profoundly international. The global financial crisis forced lawmakers the world over to trim their budgets to a fraction of their pre-2008 sizes. In turn, arts professionals and enthusiasts responded quickly and creatively: in the Netherlands, where arts funding was slashed by 25 percent, thousands marched across Amsterdam in protest. A group called Dutch Artists 2011 even placed a dramatic ad in the New York Times that read, “Do not enter the Netherlands — Cultural meltdown in progress.” England’s historically well-funded arts community was left reeling after a series of budget cuts eliminated funding for over 200 previously subsidized groups; a coalition of eight unions created a Web site to keep constant track of the cuts and what they mean for the country.

The United States was certainly not immune to cultural defunding, although most of it took place on the state and local level. Most notoriously, Kansas governor Sam Brownback entirely eliminated the state’s arts budget. But while the E.U. stands to benefit from the world’s largest-ever cultural funding program — if approved, it would flood European cultural organizations with €1.8 billion — the fate of arts funding in the U.S. remains an open question: If elected, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney pledged to cut the federal arts budget by half. 

It is our conviction that the people with the best eye for emerging artistic talent are other artists. So for this issue we asked the generous and discerning individuals below, all of whom are well established in their careers, which younger or underappreciated artists they have been watching. The list that follows — broad, international, and distinguished by the variety of approaches represented — contains their choices.

With thanks to: Daniel Arsham, Olaf Breuning, Adam Chodzko, Alexandre Da Cunha, Folkert De Jong, Daniel Dewar, Doug Fishbone, Zipora Fried, Simon Fujiwara, Orly Genger, Ragnar Kjartansson, Liz Magic Laser, Glenn Ligon, Kalup Linzy, Hew Locke, Melissa Logan, Robert Longo, Andrew Mania, Eddie Martinez, Ryan McGinness, Haroon Mirza, Sarah Morris, Wangechi Mutu, Rivane Neuenschwander, Adam Pendleton, Zineb Sedira, Erin Shirreff, Haim Steinbach, Corban Walker, Chuck Webster, Sue Williamson, B. Wurtz, Akram Zaatari, Andrea Zittel

Click the accompanying slide show to see the fourth installment of Modern Painters magazine's survey of 100 up-and-coming talents, listed alphabetically from A to Z.

SEE PART 1 OF 5

SEE PART 2 OF 5

SEE PART 3 OF 5

This year was marked by a number of notable passings in the art world. Spring and summer were particularly rough, with the departure of some of late Modernism’s greatest innovators: the California Minimalist John McCracken (b. 1934), campy stylist Jack Smith (b. 1928), and Dennis Oppenheim (b. 1938), a giant of the Conceptual art and Land art movements. There were other notable passings too in warmer months: John Hoyland (b. 1934), one of the lesser-known painters in the Abstract Expressionist constellation; Stephen De Staebler (b. 1933), the sculptor known for his muted, large scale works in bronze and clay; and Leonora Carrington, the author, surrealist painter, and spouse of Max Ernst, who was 94. Then, in the final days of the year, we saw the passing of Helen Frankenthaler (b. 1928), the second-generation Ab-Ex heroine whose poured compositions gave rise to Color Field painting.

One of the year’s most important departures was another painter who came up in the crucible of Abstract Expressionism, the legendary Cy Twombly (b. 1928). At the Museum of Modern Art, in the same year that immense crowds gathered to see a survey of Abstract Expressionism that included paintings by the soft-spoken southerner, the museum staged a much smaller show of Twombly’s white painted sculptures. Installed in May, the one-room exhibition served as an unexpected memorial for the artist when he passed away, quite suddenly, in July.

This was the same month that saw the departure of Lucian Freud (b. 1922), whose portraits typified the cryptically emotional and unshakably frank sensibility of the contemporary nude. Freud’s death would prompt an outpouring of poignant words from art world luminaries including William Feaver, a British critic who organized a Freud retrospective at Tate Britain in 2002: “Freud has generated a life’s worth of genuinely new painting that sits obstinately across the path of those lesser painters who get by on less,” he told reporters on news of his death. “He always pressed to extremes, carrying on further than one would think necessary and rarely letting anything go before it became disconcerting.”

Still, in more recent months, the artists whose obituaries were most likely to spill over in the mainstream press came from the church of Pop. Headlines reverently acknowledged the death of Richard Hamilton (b. 1922), whose collage, “Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?” gave Pop art its name (the word is on the lollipop that's covering the guy's crotch). Fans of Pop and Ab-Ex alike bid farewell to John Chamberlain in the last days of December, just as the sculptor of steel and rumbled auto parts was preparing a retrospective of his work at the Guggenheim.

Two art house filmmakers were also prominent among the year's losses. Less than a week after Hamilton’s death, admirers of the Factory scene bid farewell to the overwhelmingly prolific cult filmmaker George Kuchar (b. 1942), an artist whose dying wish was to put “humpable experiences” on screen. Later in the fall, a similar crowd would mourn the loss of Ken Russell (b. 1927), whose television and film work exemplified the flamboyance of ‘60s and ‘70s culture.

Russell, who co-produced the film “Tommy” with the Who, was one of many people who died in 2011 having contributed equally to art history and to rock and roll. Among these was the photographer Robert Whitaker (b. 1939) – a portraitist of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Cream – as well as Barry Feinstein (b. 1931), who created album covers for Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and Janis Joplin. Alex Steinweiss (b. 1917), who passed away in July, is credited for first applying creative graphic design to album covers. Until he was taken on as Columbia Records’ first art director, albums were mostly sold in plain-label sleeves.

Albeit indirectly, Steinweiss can take some measure of credit for the cover art of “The Freewheein’ Bob Dylan.” One of the most recognizable album sleeves of all time, it depicts the young singer-songwriter digging his chin into his jacket to stave off the cold as he walks down the middle of a street in Greenwich Village. While he looks down with both hands in his pockets, a girl clings to Dylan’s arm and looks up towards the camera, smiling. The woman is Suze Rotolo. She passed away this year, too.
 

Click the accompanying slide show to see the fifth installment of Modern Painters magazine's survey of 100 up-and-coming talents, listed alphabetically from A to Z.

SEE PART 1 OF 5

SEE PART 2 OF 5

SEE PART 3 OF 5

SEE PART 4 OF 5