IT’S THE SIGN OF THE TIMES: The heart, that curious, curvaceous shape, is everywhere on our phones, our screens, our social media. It’s our emoji of choice, a lingua franca of liking. A true symbol, the heart has an arbitrary relation to its referents and doesn’t strictly resemble anything. It designates the biological organ, an abstract emotion, and Instagram approval—but only because of convention, because we agree that “♥” means something. What better glyph for the art of our moment, divided as it is between abstract codes and palpable things, consensus and conflict, appetites and desires and anomie?
For Artforum’s Best of 2015 issue, we invited a group of renowned critics, artists, and curators from around the world to take stock of the year in art—of a changed landscape of expression, iconography, and judgment; of new ways of picturing the world.
—Michelle Kuo