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.
