America Is Hard to See

May 1–Sept 27, 2015

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Glossy, stagy, and buzzing with the energy of the street and the media machine, a potent strain of art in the 1980s both reflected and challenged the ethos of the era under President Ronald Reagan. An economic upswing reversed the downturn of the 1970s, though its benefits were felt unequally during a period of political conservatism that valorized conspicuous consumption and Wall Street speculation. Children of the American baby boom, the artists who came of age at this time were the first generation reared on television and the impersonal affect of Pop art. Much of their work relied on their media savvy and new theories of representation that questioned originality and authenticity in a world awash with recycled images and styles.

The sculptures of Jeff Koons, Nam June Paik, and Charles Ray on view in this chapter all incorporate readymade products or the display devices that sell them, from mannequins to lighted cases. These artists conflated the allure of consumer products and art at a time when a booming market led paintings and sculptures to be increasingly seen as commodities, a point emphasized by Louise Lawler’s auction house photograph of Andy Warhol’s take on Marilyn Monroe. Other heroines star in Sarah Charlesworth’s and Dara Birnbaum’s appropriations from art history and television, respectively, while even Keith Haring’s and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s graffiti-tinged paintings play with branding and the zip and glow of the screen.

Below is a selection of works from this chapter.

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A painting with a yellow background, words written and crossed out, and three faces.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Hollywood Africans is one of a series of paintings that feature images and texts addressing stereotypes of African Americans in the entertainment industry. Several of the work’s notations are autobiographical: he included the digits of his birthdate: 12, 22, and 60; and the trio of figures on the right depicts the artist (far right) with his friends the rap musician Rammellzee and the painter Toxic, with whom Basquiat was traveling to Los Angeles when he made this painting.

Other allusions are historical, referring to representations of African Americans in mass media; phrases such as “Sugar Cane,” “Tobacco,” “Gangsterism,” and “What is Bwana?” evoke the limited roles available to black actors in Hollywood. Basquiat reiterated the notion of exclusion by striking a line through words or phrases in his compositions. The technique, he explained, was actually meant to direct attention to the excised text: “I cross out words so you will see them more; the fact that they are obscured makes you want to read them.”

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America Is Hard to See

Racing Thoughts

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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988), HOLLYWOOD AFRICANS, 1983

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On the Hour

America Is Hard to See

Racing Thoughts

20

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988), HOLLYWOOD AFRICANS, 1983

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition in the Whitney's collection

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection