Best of 2022: GOAT

Photo by Kenyon Anderson, from Jiayang Fan's "Tables For Two: Gugu Room"

Here are my favourite “Goings On About Town” notes of 2022 (with a choice quote from each in brackets):

1. Hannah Goldfield, “Tables For Two: All’ Antico Vinaio,” April 25 & May 2, 2022 (“Towering stacks of schiacciata emerged from the basement at regular intervals, shiny with olive oil and sparkling with coarse salt, releasing clouds of steam from a dense landscape of air bubbles as the loaves were sliced horizontally, ends slivered off and passed to patiently waiting customers”); 

2. Johanna Fateman, “Art: Kate Millett,” February 28, 2022 (“The quasi-functional sculptures—tables, chairs, cabinets, a bed—are anthropomorphized domestic objects, in which found elements combine with others that were hand-carved or upholstered by the artist. Millett’s not quite figures are at once goofy and strange. Fluted or cabriole legs alternate with puppet-like limbs; a slatted chair back, painted bright red, is inset with a pair of blue eyes; a china cabinet is topped by a smooth wooden head. In ‘Blue-Eyed Marble Box,’ from 1965, an undercurrent of perversity surfaces: a Queen Anne coffee table forms the base of a blocky centauride, whose rectangular torso is pierced by rolling-pin finial nipples”); 

3. Richard Brody, “Movies: Show People,” August 8, 2022 (“Winking cameos abound: Davies takes a second role, as herself; Vidor plays himself, too; Charlie Chaplin, slight and exquisite, brings a Shakespearean grace to his self-portrayal as a humble moviegoer; and a long tracking shot of stars at a studio banquet table plays like a cinematic death row, displaying such luminaries as Renée Adorée, William S. Hart, and Mae Murray, just before they were swept away in waves of sound”);

4. Shauna Lyon, “Tables For Two: Rosella,” January 31, 2022 (“For dessert, you can have that American favorite, carrot cake, here on the verge of savory, fortified with sunchoke miso and garnished with candied orange peel and marigold flowers. The cake is scooped into a bowl, its sides smeared with a generous whoosh of scrumptious white frosting. The star ingredient? The cult favorite Ben’s cream cheese, from Rockland County, just up the road”);

5. Andrea K. Scott, “At the Galleries: 'Court, Epic, Spirit,' ” February 28, 2022 (“Ask for a magnifying glass at the front desk, the better to lose yourself in the details: a pearl-and-gold piercing in an elephant’s ear at the coronation of Rama; a peacock in a tree overlooking a gang of drug-addled sadhus; the gray-flecked beard of 'A Man of Commanding Presence.' There are decorative flourishes, too, including a tall cotton panel intricately printed with flora and fauna in crimson and green, used to line what must have been a magnificent tent, pitched for royalty on the Coromandel Coast in the mid-seventeenth century—glampers, take note”);

6. Rachel Syme, “On Television: ‘The Resort,’ ” August 1, 2022 [“ ‘The Resort,’ a splashy new streaming offering from Peacock and the creator Andy Siara (‘Palm Springs’), feels like a slushy beach drink made in a blender using parts of other recent shows: take a dash of ‘White Lotus’ (for the tropical hotel setting), add a shake of ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ (for the air of campy, unhinged mystery among the palm trees), and top it off with the likes of ‘The Flight Attendant’ or ‘The Afterparty’ (for their good old-fashioned, soapy murder mysteries). But just because this show is a piña colada of frothy ideas doesn’t mean it isn’t satisfying. The charm-oozing stars Cristin Milioti and William Jackson Harper play a couple on vacation in Mexico who become unwittingly embroiled in solving a crime that took place there years before. The cast is chock-full of shimmery character actors—Skyler Gisondo, Debby Ryan, Nick Offerman, Ben Sinclair, Becky Ann Baker, Dylan Baker—and the twists and turns are tense enough to keep you glued to the screen on a sweltering day. Think ‘Romancing the Stone’ meets a bottle of S.P.F. 50—this is made for high-summer bingeing”];

7. Vince Aletti, “In the Museums: ‘William Klein: YES,’ ” August 29, 2022 (“Klein’s best pictures are cinematic character studies, with every face and every figure singular, animated, and vividly present for his camera—a gaggle of kids with baseball cards and bubble blowers, a sidewalk full of distracted businessmen, a dapper young man sprinting through Harlem”);

8. Jiayang Fan, “Tables For Two: Gugu Room,” September 12, 2022 (“The most persuasive dishes unapologetically layer richness upon richness.” |”Around the room, skewers of meat were being delivered at a fast pace, some rapturously waved into the frames of gleeful selfies”);

9. Michaelangelo Matos, “Music: The Black Dog: ‘Brutal Minimalism,’ ” February 14 & 21, 2022 (“The grainy, gray-toned percussion, redolent of cracked concrete walls, and the low-mixed chimes, like faraway train signals, add to the verisimilitude. Even when the beats come forward, they amplify the background details”);

10. Hannah Goldfield, “Tables For Two: Queens Lanka,” August 1, 2022 (“A plate of “rice and curry,” one recent afternoon, included four varieties of the latter—made with yellow dal, or split peas; batons of beetroot, almost chocolate-like in their melty richness; jackfruit; and pineapple—in addition to a tantalizing tangle of sticky-sweet deep-fried sprats, and a version of a traditional relish called gotu kola sambol, with finely chopped kale, red onion, and tomato.” | “A lush, enormous banana leaf was folded carefully around a tightly packed pie chart of delights, over rice: slippery, soft curried cashews; dark, crispy snips of zippy batu moju, or fried-eggplant pickle; seeni sambol, a relish of supple tamarind-and-chili-glazed shallots; a fluffy curried-mackerel-and-potato fritter”).