Point blank. She didn't deserve it. Photograph: Emily Jacir creating Material for a film (performance). Courtesy The Artist And Alexander And Bonin, New York [link]
I offer this list without endorsement. These are simply the most withering remarks of the year. While I'm sure there are even pissier or at least equally scathing ones out there that I haven't included, these stand out. A simple web search of these writers will yield a rich crop of zingers every time, so if you are an art writer and you don't see your name here, maybe you're just not mean enough.
Top Ten Most Scathing Art Review Zingers of 2009
(in chronological order)
10. "THE NEW MET DIRECTOR WON’T LAST A YEAR. What was his name?" Artnet magazine: 2009 CRYSTAL BALL. By Charlie Finch, Jan 3, 2009
9. "There seems to be a mindlessness about his work that makes you wonder if even he knows what he is doing." NYTimes: Art in Review, JOSH SMITH 'Currents' Luhring Augustine. By Ken Johnson, Feb 27, 20098. "Jacir appears blind to the possibility that evil can fester in the most erudite and aesthetically inclined of souls, including, apparently, her own." -- Time Out NY: The Hugo Boss Prize 2008: Emily Jacir. By Howard Halle, Mar 5–11, 2009
7. "By contrast, Fairey's claims to questioning authority through guerrilla interventions in the public sphere are jejune. Obey Giant is now an industry, Hello Kitty with pretensions." Los Angeles Times Culture Monster: Review: Shepard Fairey at ICA Boston. By Christopher Knight, March 23, 2009
6. "Scant of surface and image, with glancing, uneasy brushwork, they imply a divided attention and a reliance on pictorial short cuts and ambiguities to disguise limited skills. Although they are some of Bacon’s best-known works, they barely pass muster as paintings." NYTimes: If Paintings Had Voices, Francis Bacon’s Would Shriek. By Roberta Smith, May 21, 2009
5. "For the most part though, the favorite artists in today’s market are dead ones. Mine, too--they are a hell of a lot easier to deal with." Artnet magazine: Dick In Hand. By Kenny Schachter, July 9, 2009
4. "Condemnations of Dash Snow as a hipster fuck-off are bound to fade away, leaving only the picture of the soul of an artist. That's how legends—-and fortunes-—get made in the art world." Gawker: Dash Snow's Basquiat-ization. By Hamilton Nolan, July 15, 2009
3. "If it feels like what 'Younger than Jesus' is really inaugurating is the era of the exhibition as status update, then maybe that alone tells us something about where we are." ARTFORUM: The Generational: Younger than Jesus. By Gene McHugh, Summer 2009
2. "But even Ms. Emin appears to have reached a point of saturation—-and, finally, the capacity to be embarrassed—-with her own oversharing." NYTimes: Quite Big in Britain, Not Quite in the U.S. By ERIC KONIGSBERG, November 13, 2009
1. "If you spend more than twenty minutes with the three-floor extravaganza, you’re loitering. The New Museum could just as well not have done the show while saying it did. The effect would be roughly the same: expressing a practically reptilian institutional craving for a new art star." The New Yorker: Putting on Urs. By Peter Schjeldahl, December 14, 2009
