No one can resist putting out the obligatory year-end listicle, so yesterday Artnet News published “The 50 Most Exciting Artists of 2014.” Art critic/curator Christian Viveros-Fauné states that his selection was chosen from “important (and enduring) artists who were active in 2014, with no apologies and in no particular order.”
We can pretend there was some sort of order, since Houston artist Rick Lowe tops the list. Lowe won a MacArthur Fellowship this year for his work with Project Row Houses, which Viveros-Fauné refers to as “the Demoiselles D’Avignon of social practice.”
Photo via NolaVie/courtesy of Linda Friedman
Also making the list is Houston artist Mel Chin, who is enjoying his four-decade survey, which originated at the New Orleans Museum of Art (and curated by ex-Houstonian Miranda Lash, now at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville.) The exhibition Mel Chin: Rematch will take over Houston in mid-January, showing at the Blaffer Art Museum, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Asia Society Texas Center, and the Station Museum of Contemporary Art.
Congrats to Rick and Mel!
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ARTNET UPDATE: Artnet’s Ben Davis published yet another list today, this one called “The Most Important Art Essays of the Year.” Mel Chin got another shout-out for his essay “Miley, Eric and Me: Basel’s Dazzle and the Dark Death Around Us” in Creative Time Reports; part-time Houstonian Raphael Rubinstein for his book, The Miraculous, got an honorable mention; as did Houston artist Nathaniel Donnett’s blog “Not That This!,” which Davis advised readers “keep it bookmarked.” GO HOUSTON!