• THE ORIGINAL MASH-UP ARTISTS

    In a world of YouTube mash-ups and blog aggregators, it feels right to revisit the original pasticheurs of the art world. "The Pictures Generation", a new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, collects the work of 30 artists who originated the art of appropriation in the 1970s and '80s, prying lose images from everyday life and injecting them with new meaning. 

    Perhaps inevitably, the show is a mishmash. There are 160 works in every kind of media, including film, photography, painting, sound, collage, artist's books and drawing. Richard Prince makes multiple appearances, as does David Salle, Robert Longo and Matt Mullican. Of particular interest are Sherrie Levine's brain-expanding collages and Cindy Sherman's self-transformations, both of which are richly represented in the show.

    But what makes this a "generation"? Holland Cotter, himself irked by the show's title, ventures a sound explanation: 

    They were born in the mid-1940s to early ’50s, in a prosperous but paranoia-prone cold war era. They were the first kids to be raised with television, fast food and disposable everything. As teenagers they were soaked in Pop Art, rock and rebel politics. As art students, even in traditionalist programs, they felt the effects of Conceptualism. Ideas replaced objects and images. Painting was pushed to the side. The movement questioned what art was for and redefined what could be art.  read more »


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  • Of blood and blueberries

    Today's New York Times has an article about one of the creepiest, most disturbing collections of photographs I have ever seen. It belonged to Karl Hoecker, the adjutant to Auschwitz's commandant, and it comprises 116 photographs of Auschwitz guards and personnel frolicking during their off hours. A slide show accompanies the article (unfortunately, some rather grating and obvious narration from an archivist accompanies the slide show), so you can see Auschwitz's joyous guards for yourself. The image - or rather the person from an image - that stays with me is a young German woman holding a bowl upside down and contorting her face into a mock sob because she just finished her portion of blueberries. At first it seems a typical summer idyll, before you realise that it was taken just a few miles away from an Auschwitz operating at full capacity.
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  • We are happy to ignore you

    VIEWED from afar, it's easy to miss the humour in Andy Freeberg's latest collection of photographs. Indeed, the images might be mistaken for abstracts—they are soberly composed interiors, all geometric forms, stark white planes and diffused light. But look closer, and you'll see Mr Freeberg's subjects: behind the white boxes are people, the crowns of their heads just barely visible. And the boxes are really desks, for the photographs were taken in the entryways of major art galleries in Chelsea. With these deadpan portraits, Mr Freeberg reveals the absurdity in gallery administrators' habit of barricading themselves behind tall facades. The exhibition, titled "Sentry", is on view at Danziger Projects in New York.


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