The 5 Art News Stories That Defined 2023
Artificial intelligence made art world inroads, New Zealand endured an annus horribilis, and Asian capitals stepped up as China fell behind. None of these were our top story in 2023.
Tourmaline, Summer Azure (2020). Colour sublimation print, 75.1 x 76.2 cm. Part of the exhibition The Irreplaceable Human—Conditions of Creativity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence at The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen (23 November 2023–1 April 2024). Courtesy the artist and Chapter NY, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni.
Women artists' dominance—buoyed by Cecilia Alemani's Milk of Dreams international exhibition at the Venice Biennale—topped our list of the defining art news stories of 2022.
Women again made headway in 2023, with Tate Modern enlisting Karin Hindsbo as Director and Guggenheim appointing Mariët Westermann its Director and CEO, the first woman to take the role. Nan Goldin topped ArtReview's Power 100 and Golden Lions for lifetime achievement went to Nil Yalter and Anna Maria Maiolino. Critics were, however, conspicuously unimpressed with Hannah Gadsby's takedown of notorious womaniser Pablo Picasso.
The Russia-Ukraine War, another top story last year, shows no sign of resolution. Aside from learning more about sanctioned Russian oligarchs' art collections, however, the art world's attention was largely hoovered up by another conflict.
So what were the five art news stories that defined 2023?
5. Louis Vuitton's Art Collabs Were Questioned
Louis Vuitton's year got off to a wobbly start after launching their global collaboration with Yayoi Kusama. The project was hugely popular—searches for Kusama's name reached an all-time high during the campaign, according to Google Trends—but several commentators questioned how much agency the 93-year-old artist had in the partnership.
That concern was exacerbated by the use of Kusama robots and a conspicuous absence of commentary on the collaboration from Kusama herself.
Instagram art world satire account @jerrygogosian exhibited rare sincerity, saying, 'I don't think this is as harmless as it would like to make you think it is.'
Just two months later, LV's treatment of artists came under scrutiny again when the luxury brand used images of Joan Mitchell's paintings in advertising campaigns against the wishes of the Joan Mitchell Foundation.
4. Aotearoa New Zealand Failed its Artists
When we broke the news that New Zealand would not have a pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale, artist Dane Mitchell—who represented New Zealand at Venice in 2019—was confounded. He told Ocula the New Zealand Pavilion 'has great value for the artist that does it and we become critically visible on a really important stage as a country. It's vital we're there.'
He said participation at Venice 'allowed me to make a work I would not have ever had the opportunity to. I think other New Zealand artists should have the opportunity to have that experience.'
This year New Zealanders also learned the name of the wealthy art patron convicted of indecently assaulting three men. James Wallace used his influence to prey upon people in the arts, and it appears that some artists and organisations continued to take money from him when his behaviour was widely known. Eighty-nine people—including prominent New Zealand artists—wrote letters of support for Wallace when he went to court.
A spokesperson for Auckland's Basement Theatre said, 'our sector leaders must continue to advocate for the arts to be appropriately funded by the government, so that the pressure to accept "unclean money" is eradicated.'
Asked what New Zealand's newly formed coalition government would do to better support the country's art sector, Paul Goldsmith, M.P. for Arts, Culture and Heritage, told Ocula, 'any funding changes will be considered as part of the budgeting process, bearing in mind New Zealand faces a very tough fiscal environment.'
3. China Slipped, but Other Asian Capitals Stepped Up
China's share of the global art market fell from 20% to 17% in 2022 as the country struggled to recover from Covid-19 and tough pandemic restrictions. Sotheby's auction of works from Wang Wei and Liu Yiqian's collection flopped when it took place in Hong Kong in October, bringing in just U.S. $69.5 million including fees, well short of estimates of $95–135 million not including fees.
Cities around the region, however, gained traction internationally. Art Assembly launched their fair Tokyo Gendai in July, two decades after the city's last international art fair shuttered. Both Tokyo Gendai and Art Collaboration Kyoto secured crucial tax exemptions for visiting galleries showing work, while participants in Art Week Tokyo were buoyed by support from Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs. Pace announced that it will open a new gallery in Tokyo in 2024.
In Seoul, Frieze returned for a strong second edition, and Sotheby's opened in the city. Elsewhere in the region, Mumbai launched an ambitious new fair, Art Mumbai, and Singapore inaugurated its own art weekend.
China is, however, on track to recover some of the ground it lost last year. There was a strong showing at Art Basel Hong Kong in March and 242 galleries are set to take part in the fair next year, a number not seen since before the pandemic.
2. AI Art (and Press Releases) Came Online
In his predictions for the Year of the Rabbit (January 2023–February 2024), artist Trevor Paglen said AI tools such as Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT would cause 'a revolution in cultural production so massive that it will make the 15th-century invention of perspective seem quaint.'
That may seem hyperbolic, but things are already getting weird.
Refik Anadol continues to wow the world with his generative works, and algorithm-powered experience teamlab Planets TOKYO defeated sites including Angkor Wat, the Great Wall of China, and the Taj Mahal to be named Asia's Leading Tourist Attraction 2023.
German artist Boris Eldagsen won the Creative category of the Sony World Photography Awards with an image he generated using DALL-E 2, while Alex Israel used Chat-GPT to write a press release for his exhibition Fins at Gagosian in Rome.
Tapping into growing anxieties about the rise of AI, a show at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen pondered ways we can strive to not be rendered obsolete by AI, while Jordan Wolfson unveiled his unsettling new robotic performance piece Body Sculpture (2023) at Canberra's NGA.
1. The Israel-Palestine Conflict Split the Art World
It's hard to think of an issue that has caused a deeper rift in the art world than the humanitarian disaster now playing out in Gaza.
Artforum's Editor-in-Chief, David Velasco, was fired after the magazine published an open letter—signed by over 8,000 people, including artists such as Katharina Grosse and Simon Fujiwara—calling for an end to the killing of civilians in Gaza.
Other senior editors at the magazine resigned in support of Velasco, who told The New York Times, 'I'm disappointed that a magazine that has always stood for freedom of speech and the voices of artists has bent to outside pressure.'
Artforum did not respond to Ocula's questions about the substance of that pressure.
Artists Nicole Eisenman and Nan Goldin said they would no longer work with Artforum after Velasco's ousting. Goldin also cancelled a job with New York Times' Sunday magazine because of the newspaper's reporting, which she said 'shows complicity with Israel'.
High-profile German exhibition Documenta was also shaken by the crisis, which prompted two members of its Finding Committee—Bracha L. Ettinger and Ranjit Hoskote—to resign.
'I am being asked to accept a sweeping and untenable definition of anti-Semitism that conflates the Jewish people with the Israeli state; and that, correspondingly, misrepresents any expression of sympathy with the Palestinian people as support for Hamas,' Hoskote said.
Among the many examples of cancelled events and jobs lost over the conflict, Anna Schwartz broke ties with Mike Parr over the artist's performance at her gallery, and four Ai Weiwei exhibitions—two at Lisson Gallery and two at Galerie Max Hetzler—were nixed after he sent a now deleted tweet that said, in part, 'The sense of guilt around the persecution of the Jewish people has been, at times, transferred to offset the Arab world.'
Speaking to The Art Newspaper about one of the cancelled shows, Ai said, 'without exaggeration, as a person or an artist, I can live without ever doing another exhibition, and I can live without art as the space of expression, but I cannot live without free thinking and free speech. That would mean the end of life.' —[O]
