Change came to the art world in 2009. Sculpture moved away from room-filling installations and found objects in individual works. Painting became more pliable, viable, and visual. Video explored the world as a living specimen, probing into culture, ethnography, anthropology, and sociology. Performance went beyond mere navel gazing to look at the bellybuttons of the world, while older artists and unknowns made their presence felt. My picks for this year’s most notable art include:

Matthew Weinstein; Sonnabend Gallery – Mr. Weinstein’s painterly precision illustrates how important it is for artists to toss out everyone else’s ideas of what art is to get as close as possible to one’s own ideas. Weinstein isn’t well known enough yet, and needs to find a way to attract a larger audience.

Duke Riley, Those About to Die Salute you: Queens Museum of Art – This mock sea battle between New York’s museums, staged in a flooded pool near the Queens Museum, coaxed the spirits of reverie, chaos, and abandon out into the open, while advancing ideas of what art could be if it is willing to go in its own direction.

Picasso: Mosqueteros: Gagosian Gallery – This magnificent show of 52 powerful paintings and 41 intricate prints – all made between 1962 and 1972, the year of Picasso’s death – show Picasso frolicking with women, helplessly aging, and still hungering for life.

The New York debuts of Leidy Churchman, Cyprien Gaillard, and Josephine Halvorson – Gaillard’s Desniansky Raion allowed glimpses into the love, confusion, and information younger artists are turning to these days. Halvorson’s quiet paintings echoed the spirit of William Nicholson, and Churchman’s beautifully rendered wood paintings combined folk art and Indian manuscript painting.

Diego Velazquez, “Portrait of a Man”: The Metropolitan Museum of Art – Part of Met’s collection since 1949, this portrait was attributed first to Van Dyke, then the “workshop” of Velazquez, and then “School Piece in the Velazquez Manner.” The picture went in for cleaning earlier this year, and the painting emerged as a real work by Velazquez, one of the greatest painters of all time.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about art