America Is Hard to See

May 1–Sept 27, 2015

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Jack Smith’s film Scotch Tape takes its name from something almost invisible and unintentional—a shadow in the lower right corner, caused by a piece of cellophane tape that got caught in the camera while Smith was filming. By titling his work after this bit of detritus, Smith underscores his embrace of accident and the real world’s intrusion into art. Many of the artists represented in this chapter shared in this omnivorous attitude, and their work features extensive use of nontraditional materials, often scavenged in junk shops and along city streets. There are assemblages including bits of burned paper, deconstructed furniture, comics, conveyor belts, newsprint, and a stuffed pheasant. Even the paintings and other works in more traditional mediums appear built up or perhaps excavated from the base stuff of the world.

These works were made at a time of great postwar prosperity, when widespread material excess and consumption existed as never before in human history. Yet the planned obsolescence of mass-produced goods led to more and more junk, and the booming economy was inextricably linked to the military-industrial complex and a daily life informed by the simmering tensions of the Cold War. Under these circumstances, making art from castoffs and embracing chance could be seen as a way of resisting the norms of postwar American consumer society. That challenge manifests itself differently in the various works on view in this chapter, whether through irony, perversity, humor, hermeticism, creative intensity or refusal, shamanic ritual, or material transformation.

Below is a selection of works from this chapter.