I’m a fan of list-making, and most of the people within the artwork world should not, as a result of it is a house, in spite of everything, the place that type of writing is taken into account déclassé at finest. And so, after I introduced the thought to rank the perfect 100 artworks of the twenty first century to a gathering of ARTnews and Artwork in America editors final fall, I anticipated that everybody would contemplate the idea gauche. That wasn’t what occurred: the editors enthusiastically supported the thought of such a listing. However this, it turned out, was one of many final issues we’d instantly agree upon.
Within the ensuing months, we traded Phrase docs, spreadsheets, and Slack messages crammed with concepts for what ought to go on the record. There was little overlap amongst our strategies, and there have been plenty of works to sift by. We spent hours debating which artworks to even contemplate as a bunch, calling on editors to defend their proposed items earlier than these assembled.
If the argument was compelling, the work was moved onward. If it wasn’t, that work was tossed out of consideration. It was powerful going for some actually nice artwork, and it was a course of that generated no small diploma of collegiate discord. (I’m nonetheless embittered over being disallowed from itemizing a portray by Michel Majerus—I do know I’m proper and my colleagues are fallacious, however I say that with love.)
We set down some standards to restrict ourselves. Just one piece per artist was allowed to be listed, and the artworks reviewed needed to be produced between 2000 and now—except for one piece that made our record, Walid Raad’s Atlas Group challenge, whose relationship incessantly adjustments as a part of its genius conceit. The artworks needed to communicate to one thing, whether or not it was an off-the-cuff motion or a bent that was within the air, they usually needed to emblematize a sensibility that was distinctly of this century. We did our greatest to concentrate on particular person artworks that stood on their very own, within the absence of different associated items, which meant that some really nice artists wouldn’t determine right here. And we decided that the works thought-about needn’t be influential and even broadly seen—they merely needed to be high-quality.
Thus far, so easy. However we rapidly realized there have been problems: some works functioned finest in sequence, which appeared to preclude their being listed as discrete items. Furthermore, some works belonged to initiatives or sequence begun within the Nineties, earlier than the beginning of our purview, and that raised questions on their inclusion. And the way finest to be world? We’re New York–primarily based journalists with out journey budgets, in spite of everything.
In the long run, we determined to rely on what we all know finest: the objects that we noticed firsthand. Meaning our record is very subjective and on no account all-encompassing. One other publication’s record—that of, say, a Berlin-based journal, and even one other New York–primarily based journal—would possibly look completely completely different. We thought this was completely acceptable.
Our record offers solely a partial view of current artwork historical past. The place, you would possibly ask, is relational aesthetics? Not right here, for essentially the most half, save for one memorable Tino Sehgal efficiency. What about zombie formalism and the current figuration craze? Additionally not right here, principally. And what about famed artworks like Damien Hirst’s bejeweled cranium and Anne Imhof’s efficiency for the 2017 German Pavilion on the Venice Biennale? Absent as nicely—we determined they weren’t for us.
However we weren’t attempting to place ahead each notable art work made since 2000, since that will require a a lot bigger record. And in addition to, the artwork world has grown too huge for one editorial group to see every thing. That will not be such a foul factor.
Right here’s a thought experiment: Think about you might be an editor at ARTnews 75 years in the past, in 1950, and say you need to tackle the identical challenge. You’d have a a lot simpler time nailing down the 100 finest works of the twentieth century thus far as a result of there was a very good likelihood they had been exhibited in New York, Paris, or London, and had been seemingly by an artist primarily based in a kind of cities. You’d haven’t any drawback selecting out the nice works—there can be no query about rating Jackson Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm (Quantity 30) extremely, even when that portray was made that very yr—and also you’d know precisely which modernist actions you wanted to mirror.
In 1950, the artwork world was small. However in 2025, that’s now not the case. Artists are primarily based all world wide, in locales starting from Buenos Aires to Beirut, and biennials have come to mirror the breadth of as we speak’s artwork scene, with the newest editions of Documenta and the Venice Biennale each largely centered on the World South, an exceedingly massive swath of the world that has traditionally been stored out of our Eurocentric canon. To see every thing is now tough, if not outright unfeasible; to create a 100-work record that displays all of it is rattling close to unattainable.
Maybe we are going to look upon our record in 2050 with embarrassment, cringing over how a lot nice artwork we failed to note. Or possibly our future selves will likely be content material with what we did handle to seize about artwork within the twenty first century.
Both means, the very fact is that this: we’re sure to miss one thing, and that—for my part, anyway—is kind of alright. The amount of noteworthy artwork is larger than ever earlier than, and our record, even at a monumental 100 works, with some 15,000 phrases of copy to accompany them, seems puny compared. Right here’s to studying about all the nice artwork we missed within the years to come back.
