Sandcastles and sunspots: The year in art

By GREG COOK | December 17, 2012

Os Gêmeos

It was a year of bracing histories — '60s assassinations, '80s pandemics, and four decades of hubris in Iraq. But 2012's best art wasn't all bad news. Brandeis University revived its Rose Art Museum. And a sunny new mural became a beacon in the heart of the city — and a benchmark for what art in Boston can achieve.

OS GÊMEOS :: Was the technicolor giant that the Brazilian street-art twins Os Gêmeos painted at Dewey Square last summer just your friendly neighborhood graffiti kid or, as Fox friends suggested, a terrorist? A little from column A and a little from column B. The cheekily ambiguous mural flooded the site of the 2011 Occupy encampment with sunny delight. It's the best large-scale public art in Boston in decades. It has permission to be there for a year and a half. Email the mayor (mayor@cityofboston.gov) and demand it live forever.

"KENNEDY TO KENT STATE":: This photo show at the Worcester Art Museum (through February 3) is a riveting blow-by-blow account of how utopian 1960s dreams came undone between the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the resignation of Richard Nixon.

Ori Gersht, Pomegranate

ORI GERSHT :: Israeli artist Gersht's striking videos of exploding old-master still lifes in "History Repeating" at the Museum of Fine Arts (through January 6) reverberate with the post-traumatic stress of the Holocaust and Israel's subsequent wars.

"OH, CANADA":: Curator Denise Markonish spent three years crisscrossing Canada to reveal a whole nation (incredibly) off the American art world's radar, except for the occasional Vancouver photographer. "Oh, Canada" at MASS MoCA (through April 1) shows what we're missing: visionary spectacles like Shary Boyle's naked spider-woman disappearing into a midnight web.

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ARTICLES BY GREG COOK

A REALLY BIG SHOW! | May 21, 2013
This showcase of tomorrow's-art-stars-today is both invigorating and overwhelming, with work by 194 students.

CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN | May 13, 2013
What does it mean to be a man? That's the question at the heart of this smart, sumptuous exhibit — one of the best shows in the region this year.

MERRY PRANKSTERS | May 07, 2013
Parked out front of Brown University's gray modernist Granoff Center on a recent sunny morning were one of those 15-foot-tall inflatable rats that unions install in front of businesses they're protesting and a limousine sloppily painted to resemble a yellow and black school bus.

ALTERED IMAGES | April 30, 2013
Among the handsome Washington Street storefronts of AS220's renovated Mercantile Block building, with their neo-old-timey signs, is the residents' entrance to the building. It is against AS220's religion to leave any space empty that can be filled with art. So the lobby is the AS220 Resident Gallery, which occupants of the building take turns filling with their stuff.

IN THE CITY | April 23, 2013
One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Providence art scene is how the city itself has been such a rich subject. A decade ago, the city became a galvanizing topic as artists fought to protect the old mills that served as their homes and studios from demolition — with mixed success. But lately, the community's industrial architecture itself has attracted artists' attention.