Martha Wilson

  • Odilon Redon, Domecy Decoration: Trees, Yellow Background, 1901, oil, distemper, 94 5/8 x 72 7/8".
    print December 2011

    THEIR FAVORITE EXHIBITIONS OF THE YEAR

    To take stock of the past year, Artforum contacted an international group of artists to find out which exhibitions and events were, in their eyes, the very best of 2011.

    ERICKA BECKMAN

    Mary Reid Kelley, Sadie the Saddest Sadist (Armory Show, New York) Tucked away in the back of the Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects booth at the 2011 Armory Show was a monitor showing a costumed figure with exaggerated face paint, pacing in front of a hand-drawn black-and-white background. The piece was Mary Reid Kelley’s Sadie the Saddest Sadist, 2009, and the mixed metaphors, narrative snippets, and repurposed

  • books December 1984

    $19.84

    STARTING WITH THE TITLE $19.84, William Wegman pokes fun at life in the ’80s—of course, everything that used to cost $5.00 (like artists’ publications) now costs $19.84. Actually his book costs $10.00 and this is cheap, really, for what’s inside. One example to suggest the rest: Foster Parents, 1984, is a Polaroid photo of a small girl holding the hand of a woman draped in tiger-striped fabric, who in turn is standing next to a man draped in giraffe-patterned fabric except the spots are black. Get it? OK let’s try another one. How about a line drawing in black and white of a grown man and a boy.