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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Sarah Charlesworth’s Fear of Nothingpairs a solid black panel with a Roman mask hovering above three geometric forms on a blue ground. The two photographs stage a wry dialogue about the history of art. Here classical antiquity and basic architectural building blocks face off against total abstraction. The “fear” of the title may refer to the mask’s expression although, so exaggerated that it is hard to take entirely seriously, its emotional register remains ambiguous. The reference to “nothing” is no easier to resolve—does that black square stand in for an existential void? Formalist abstraction? Blankness, emotional or otherwise? Charlesworth gave us few clues to resolve these questions.

This work is one in a series, called Objects of Desire. To make the photographs in the series, Charlesworth cut images from fashion magazines, archaeological textbooks, and other publications, arranged them against colorful backgrounds, and rephotographed the resulting collages.

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America Is Hard to See

Racing Thoughts

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SARAH CHARLESWORTH (1947-2013), FEAR OF NOTHING, 1987, PARTIALLY REFABRICATED 2012

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On the Hour

America Is Hard to See

Racing Thoughts

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SARAH CHARLESWORTH (1947-2013), FEAR OF NOTHING, 1987, PARTIALLY REFABRICATED 2012

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition in the Whitney's collection

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection