2009 exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York City
The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984 was an exhibition atThe Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York City that ran from April 29 – August 2, 2009.[1] The exhibition took its name fromPictures, a 1977 five person group show organized by art historian and criticDouglas Crimp (1944–2019) at New York City'sArtists Space gallery.[2] The artists exhibited from September 24 to October 29, 1977 wereTroy Brauntuch,Jack Goldstein,Sherrie Levine,Robert Longo and Philip Smith.[3]
In his catalogue essay for the 1977 show and a 1979 expansion of the essay published in the journalOctober, Crimp outlined a framework to describe shared themes in the work of the five artists he presented. In general, these were an interest in representational imagery, and references to mass media that the artists explored through "processes of quotation, excerptation, framing, and staging."[6]
The Pictures Generation was not the first major exhibition to examine these artists as a distinct group, but it was the first to focus only on this cohort from a scholarly perspective.[7]A Forest of Signs: Art in the Crisis of Representation, a 1989 exhibition at theMuseum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles examined the work of American artists born between 1944 and 1956 who used mass media imagery.[8] Also in 1989,Image World: Art and Media Culture, an exhibition at theWhitney Museum of American Art, examined the role of mass media imagery in contemporary art from the 1950s to the 1980s, with thePictures Generation artists playing a prominent role.[9]
The Met's show, curated by Douglas Eklund, argued that, from the perspective of three decades later, it is evident that Crimp's observations described a widely shared sensibility among artists of the 1970s and 80s.[10] The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue sought to tell the story of this "Pictures Generation" and explore the ways that these artists developed their approach to art-making. In the main catalogue essay, Elkund focused on three communities where artists shared and refined the concepts that unify thePictures Generation: TheCalifornia Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Los Angeles,Hallwalls in Buffalo andArtists Space.[11]
As time has gone on, other writers have argued that artists not included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art show, such asEric Fischl andJulian Schnabel, were a part of this group.Norman Rosenthal, the curator of Schnabel's 2011 retrospective at theMuseo Correr inVenice, in that show's catalogue calls the artist "a leader and an outsider of the so-called Pictures Generation".Gary Indiana has proposed further artists as having been part of this group despite the exclusion of their work from the Metropolitan Museum's exhibition, includingWalter Robinson.[12]
During the fall of 2020 into the winter of 2021 the Metropolitan Museum has produced a follow-up exhibition on the occasion of the ten year anniversary ofThe Pictures Generation, titledPictures Revisited. This second show focuses on "appropriation" and features the work of five artists from the original exhibition as well of that of other artists whose careers began both before and after thePictures Generation practitioners' did.
^Duncan, Elmer H. (1990). "A Forest of Signs: Art in the Crisis of Representation, ed. by Catherine Gudis (review)".Leonardo.23 (4): 449.doi:10.2307/1575355.JSTOR1575355.S2CID193813078.
