Issue 144
Jan - Feb 2012

The Jan / Feb issue of frieze looks back over the significant events and issues of 2011, with a series of dispatches from Beirut, Berlin, Cairo, London, Los Angeles, New York and Tokyo.

As well as round-ups of the best films, architecture, design, music and publications of the year, these reports include Jennifer Higgie and Sam Thorne talk to Chris Dercon, the new director of Tate Modern and Dan Hancox revisits a year of unrest in the UK; Negar Azimi considers art’s conflicted relationship with the Arab Spring, while, from Beirut, Kaelen Wilson-Goldie looks at artistic autonomy in Lebanon; Stacey Allan and Sam Thorne report from ‘Pacific Standard Time’, an unprecedented survey of South Californian art between 1945 and 1980; Philip Brophy and Kyoji Maeda reflect upon Japan’s artistic psyche after the tsunami.

From this issue

From retro to repro, and beyond

BY Dominikus Müller AND Geeta Dayal | 01 JAN 13

Experimental magazines, absurdist writing and new fiction, the publishing highlights of 2011

BY David Senior AND Emily Stokes | 01 JAN 12

What two photographs taken by a Spanish judge in Baghdad reveal about the impossibility of untangling a moment in the past

BY Mario Garcia Torres | 01 JAN 12

Art’s conflicted relationship with the Arab Spring

BY Negar Azimi | 01 JAN 12

A survey of modern living in California, biennials in Asia and a new generation of design studios

01 JAN 12

The best movies and artists’ films of 2011

BY Thomas Beard AND Emilie Bickerton | 01 JAN 12

Jennifer Higgie and Sam Thorne talk to the new director of Tate Modern about the museum’s plans for the future

BY Jennifer Higgie AND Sam Thorne | 01 JAN 12

A year of unrest in the UK

BY Dan Hancox | 01 JAN 12

What can artists learn from writers?

BY Jennifer Allen | 01 JAN 12

The strange allure of amulets

BY George Pendle | 01 JAN 12

What a show in New York says about artistic freedom in Lebanon

BY Kaelen Wilson-Goldie | 01 JAN 12

From issue 144, January-February 2012: Kathy Noble talks to Tania Bruguera about the artist’s long-term project in New York, Immigrant Movement International, and what it means not to ‘represent politics but to create political situations’

BY Kathy Noble | 01 JAN 12

frieze speaks to a new wave of young, dynamic gallerists about their hopes and dreams

01 JAN 12

A golden age of television

01 JAN 12

Revisiting art’s social turn and the 1990s: the decade that has yet to end

BY Lars Bang Larsen | 01 JAN 12

The factors behind the mayor of Berlin’s controversial decision to fund the exhibition ‘Made in Berlin'

BY Jörg Heiser | 01 JAN 12

Advocate or Informer? Julian Assange and WikiLeaks

BY Jan Verwoert | 01 JAN 12

Reasons and responses: the cuts to arts funding in the Netherlands

BY Moosje Goosen | 01 JAN 12

From housing design in Japan to urban interventions in Caracas, architecture in 2011 was characterized by a rethinking of public and private space

BY Niklas Maak | 01 JAN 12

Remembering 9/11: how exhibitions in New York and Berlin commemorated the tenth anniversary of the attacks

BY Christy Lange | 01 JAN 12

Gabriela Jauregui on LACMA’s essential retrospective of Asco’s subtle yet humorous blend of art and activism

BY Gabriela Jauregui | 01 JAN 12

‘Pacific Standard Time’ is an collaboration that traces different histories of Southern Californian art from 1945 to 1980

BY Sam Thorne AND Stacey Allan | 01 JAN 12

How art can provide new tools for living in a precarious age

BY Jochen Volz | 12 DEC 11

After the tsunami: the role of disaster in Japan’s artistic psyche

BY Philip Brophy AND Kyoji Maeda | 01 JAN 11