Sixties Surreal | Art & Artists

Sept 24, 2025–Jan 19, 2026

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Jess, If All the World Were Paper and All the Water Sink, 1962

This work points to the artist's role in helping produce plutonium for the Manhattan Project and his anxieties about the atomic age. A central figure in the Bay Area art scene, Jess combined unrelated images to create new meanings, relying on both esoteric and traditional symbolism. A nuclear mushroom cloud is encircled with the Greek letter Omega, signifying an apocalypse, and a parrot, representing folly, swallows an owl with a key, representing wisdom. In one interpretation, the owl has unlocked the secret of the ultimate folly: nuclear destruction. The silhouetted figure stands in for both the artist and the viewer; he is observing the violence of the century, even as innocent children play in the center of the composition.

Artists

On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Frank WANG Yefeng, The Levitating Perils #2

Learn more about this project

Learn more at whitney.org/artport

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Due to the anticipated effects of the blizzard, the Whitney Museum of American Art will close early Sunday, February 22 at 4 pm and will be closed to the public on Monday, February 23.