Issue 151
Nov - Dec 2012

As 2012 draws to a close, frieze invites a number of writers and curators from around the world to reflect on the year in art. Featuring: Daniel Baumann, Ellen Blumenstein, Tatiana Cuevas, Charlotte Day, Douglas Fogle, Dan Kidner, Silas Martí, Yasmine El Rashidi, Elodie Royer & Yoann Gourmel, Katy Siegel, Sam Thorne and Carol Yinghua Lu.

Also featuring: Brian Dillon surveys writers from Michel de Montaigne to Wayne Koestenbaum, and from Virginia Woolf to Chris Marker; three reports from the Dutch Capital in City Report: Amsterdam. 

From this issue

This year, the Billy Apple® brand turns 50. The artist formerly known as Barrie Bates talked to Anthony Byrt about a career of collaborations and controversies that has consistently redefined art’s relationships with advertising, science and technology

BY Anthony Byrt |

My practice is ...

From Oskar Schlemmer and Cindy Sherman to Seth Price, Michael Portnoy and K8 Hardy, generations of artists have employed the codes of fashion and costume design. Vivian Sky Rehberg takes stock of the traffic between the worlds of art and dress

How do artists respond to current events?

BY Lynne Tillman |

The rise and fall of biennials in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal and South Africa

BY Sean O'Toole |

Do we live in a time of ‘patho-politics’?

BY Jennifer Allen |

Star Gallery, Beijing, China

BY Carol Yinghua Lu |

A letter to the visionary architect Yona Friedman

BY Jean-Baptiste Decavèle |

The first mainstream R&B star to come out instead of remaining a question mark has initiated an honest discussion, but there is still some distance to go

BY Geeta Dayal |

Measuring success in community design projects, from Dakar to Newfoundland

BY Jennifer Kabat |

The new wave of social-realist storytelling in American cinema

BY Bert Rebhandl |

Some highlights from the year's exhibitions

The unsettling installations of Rabih Mroué

BY Ellen Blumenstein |

The growth of public institutions in Mexico City

BY Tatiana Cuevas |

The little things that stood out in 2012

BY Daniel Baumann |

Biennials, new commercial galleries and the reopening of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney

BY Charlotte Day |

Journals, poems, biography and ‘direct implication’– the year in books

BY Quinn Latimer |

Looking at art from different angles

BY Christy Lange |

Anti-Japanese protests and the 18th National Congress have meant a rocky year in China

Confidence and resolve in the Brazilian art scene

There is a resurgence of interest in the essay, with collections by Jonathan Lethem, John Jeremiah Sullivan and the first biography of David Foster Wallace all published this year. Is it possible to define a form that stretches from Michel de Montaigne to Wayne Koestenbaum, from Virginia Woolf to Chris Marker? Brian Dillon surveys this enigmatic field, and asks whether this centuries-old tradition might be the genre of the future

BY Brian Dillon |

Tramway, Glasgow, UK

BY Chris Sharratt |

To coincide with the long-delayed reopening of the Stedelijk Museum, which closed its doors in 2003, frieze commissioned three reports from the Dutch capital. Nick Aikens reviews the renovated museum, Maxine Kopsa takes stock of last year’s cuts to cultural budgets, and Timotheus Vermeulen considers the impact of the recent national elections

Contemplating recent events at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Changes in historical perspective that are shaping art being made today

BY Katy Siegel |