From Dada to the Edge of Pop: The Rise of the Surreal Sixties

Online, via Zoom

Open to all members

Wednesday, August 20, 6 pm
Friday, September 5, 12 pm
Thursday, September 11, 6 pm

Members are invited to join Museum Educator Kenta Bloom for an expansive introduction to the roiling aesthetic undercurrents and evocative artists on view in our upcoming fall exhibition, Sixties Surreal. 

Early iterations of surreal aesthetics can be traced back to the rebellious absurdity of European Dadaists and Surrealists in the 1910-20s. In reaction to the traumatic birth of modern society and the brutality of WWI, artists explored ideas of the comical, the grotesque, and the subconscious. In the following decades, Surrealism fell out of fashion in the arts while simultaneously infiltrating the cultural consciousness of the Western world. During the social and political turmoil of the 1960s in America, surrealism re-emerged as artists found themselves caught in the margins of the abstraction-heavy art world and the fringes of Pop art’s commercial sheen. 

By connecting broad artistic movements and individual creators, this talk will explore the foundational ideas in Sixties Surreal, a radical re-examination of the aesthetics that shaped the decade.

Kenta Bloom is an educator at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Tenement Museum. With a degree in art history and museum studies from SUNY Purchase, he has worked with various New York City cultural institutions, including Mmuseumm, the Jewish Museum, and the Rubin Museum. His interests include New York City history and architecture, Baroque painting, Buddhist sculpture, and Japanese martial arts.