2018 may well be remembered as the year in which baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi finally began to get the mainstream recognition she so clearly deserves. Thanks in part to the momentum of the #MeToo movement, whose voices found solidarity with Gentileschi’s troubled but defiant life-story, media outlets began to wake up to her work.
Some critics have long made the case that Gentileschi’s skill - her treatment of light, her feel for expressive posture and facial features, and her ability to handle complex narrative strands within the tension of a single moment - rivals even Caravaggio. With Dorotheum’s high-profile sale of Lucretia for over $2 million in October, and the first ever display of her Self-portrait as Catherine of Alexandria coming next week at the British National Gallery, the spotlight is beginning to shine on this extraordinary artist.
Artemisia Gentileschi, Lucretia
But it wasn’t just historical figures who began to gain renewed and deserved recognition over the last twelve months. Modern and contemporary artists whose reputations gained a significant mainstream boost during 2018 included Jack Whitten, Sam Gilliam, and Joan Mitchell. Each of these artists were, of course, already well-known and well-loved. 2018, however, saw them take significant steps towards the highest levels of renown.
Whitten sadly passed away in January, only months before the large retrospective of his paintings and sculptures opened at the New York Met. The exhibition did much to solidify Whitten’s reputation as one of the wittiest and most incisive chroniclers of the black American experience, from the Jim Crow South to the “hyper-woke” urban present. Gilliam and Mitchell’s work had the dubious honor of seeing its market-value catch up with its critical reputation, with auction houses reporting frenzied activity around these two painers in particular.
Some established living masters achieved notable market-milestones. Jenny Saville became the most expensive living female artist in history when her painting Propped (1992) fetched over $12 million in October. In the high-profile November sales, David Hockney's Portrait of An Artist (Pool With Two Figures) (1972) became the most expensive single work by a living artist ever sold.
Sam Gilliam, August (1991)
Yayoi Kusama's large exhibition at the Victoria Miro, including an infinity room, meant there was even more of a buzz than usual around her pumpkins and polkadots. Athi Patra-Ruga's first UK solo show at Somerset House announced his extraordinary multimedia explorations of bodies and culture, utopias and dystopias, to the European and global scene.
The Turner Prize enjoyed a level of acclaim and enthusiasm which it hadn’t seen in years. Winningartist Charlotte Prodger is breaking new and intimate grounds in narrative filmmaking, whilst bookies’ favorites Forensic Architecture encapsulate much of the collective-driven politico-aesthetic of 2018, the rapidly growing synthesis of art and activism.
In this spirit, Tania Bruguera’s installations in the Tate Modern - heat-sensitive floors revealing the figures of refugees, rooms that literally induced tears, and renamed buildings paying tribute to local activists - stirred conversation and awareness around the humanitarian crises which swept Europe and the world this year. Marc Quinn’s upcoming installation, mingling blood from refugees and Western celebrities, also dominated headlines late in the year.
Artwork by Yuko Mohri
Last year’s Turner Prize Winner, Lubaina Himid, held a long-running installation at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead. Our Kisses Are Petals explored storytelling, riddling, and human flesh through paintings done on West African Kanga cloth.
Public art played its role both in raising the profile of contemporary artists and bringing a broader engagement with creative practices. Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s mural at Brixton Underground Station in London ensured her work was seen by millions of commuters, homeward-bound beneath her monumental yet delicate exploration of domestic energies in light of the Windrush scandal.
Joy Labinjo Untitled (2017)
Joy Labinjo’s painting comes from similar zones. Her collage-style is all foreground, giving an immediacy of spatial tension to the colorful communities she depicts.
Issy Wood’s eerie interiors and off-kilter still-lives impressed the writer Orit Gat during Art Basel Miami, while Hardeep Pandhal’s energetic, satirical work was presented by Javheri Contemporary at Frieze London to great acclaim. Yuko Mohri’s work in the months since winning the Japanese Ministry of Education Award for Fine Arts in 2017 has been a rhythmic, photic, harmonious meditation on slowing down our progress-obsessed world.
Njideka Akunyili Crosby, As We See You: Dreams of Jand (2017). Image courtesy the artist.
With such a rich, contemplative body of work coming to the fore (alongside art-fair high-jinks and in-jokes from Banksy) meant that 2018 was a year of stimulating discourse and exploring identity. We can certainly look forward to more vibrant and powerful art fuelled by social and environmental activism as we move towards the end of the decade.
