[caption id="attachment_7487" align="alignnone" width="560" caption="Keith Sonnier. Lit Circle. 1969-86. Synthetic polymer paint on circular glass."][/caption]
The Museum of Modern Art’s new exhibit, “Contemporary Art from the Collection,” opened yesterday and will be on view through September 12th. Taking a chronological approach to the collection, organizers Kathy Halbreich and Christophe Cherix structured the exhibit’s 130 works by time period, starting with the 1960s and ending at the present day. As a result, the works of the 60+ artists represented are seen within their historical context, responding to the current events of the time.
The 1960s and 1970s section of the exhibit galleries includes works by Robert Rauschenberg, George Maciunas, Pino Pascali, Adrian Piper, Gordon Matta-Clark, Alison Knowles, Paul Sharits, Daniel Buren, Simon Hantaï, Agnes Martin, Marisa Merz, Keith Sonnier, Jackie Winsor, Yoko Ono, and Mel Bochner. As decades known for social and political upheaval, the sixties and seventies saw a similar questioning of traditional methods in the art world, such as painting and sculpture. Practices such as intensifying traditional methods, using new materials to create unique works, and the “dematerialization” of art resulted. Standout pieces in this collection include Rauschenberg’s Currents (1970), which is a collage of newspaper clippings spanning several walls of the gallery, Pascali’s Machine Gun (1966) and Bridge (1968), which are sculptures made of car parts and steel wool, respectively, and Shartis’s Ray Gun Virus(1966), a film intended to create optical illusions for the viewer.
The 1980s, which saw the beginning of the digital age, inspired a new trend in the art world. Rather than create something completely new, artists reinvented old images and concepts. A prime example is David Hammons’s African-American Flag (1990), which replaces the red, white, and blue with the Pan-African flag colors red, black, and green. General Idea’s AIDS (Wallpaper) (1988) is a new take on Robert Indiana’s “LOVE” image. Other artists represented in this part of the exhibit are Sherrie Levine, Bruce Nauman, Felix Gonzales-Torres, and Andy Warhol.
Works at the end of the exhibit are from the past decade, a period when there was and continues to be a spirited freedom towards artistic expression. Artists included are Huang Yong, Marcel Duchamp, Lucy McKenzie, Sergej Jensen, Gedi Sibony, and Paul Chan. Notable pieces include Huang Yong’s Long Scroll (2010), which is a modern take on an ancient Chinese tradition, and a small showcase by Paul Chan about his work presenting the play Waiting for Godot on the streets of post-Katrina New Orleans (for more information about Chan's project, see Whitewall's review of his Field Guide here). The Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, which leads into the exhibit galleries, also contains works from the present day with Yoko Ono’s Voice Piece for Soprano (1961/2010) and Kara Walker’s Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred b’tween the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart(1994).
Though some works these have been shown in MoMA before, others are on display for the first time in the museum. Director of MoMA Glenn Lowry said that “Contemporary Art from the Collection” shows “the degree to which the museum acts as a laboratory, where the collection is constantly being shaped and re-shaped, can be presented to the public in new and different ways, wildly different strands, arguments, and artists who emerge over time, and to give a sense of the richness, mortality, and complexity of contemporary artistic practice.”
Robert Rauschenberg (American, 1925–2008) Currents, Installation view at MoMA. 1970 Screenprint. Edition: 6.
Hannah Wilke. Marxism and Art: Beware of Fascist Feminism.1977. Screenprint on Plexiglas, composition and sheet.
Georg Herold. Will the Russians Go to War? 1984. Wood, mixed mediums on paper, and metal.
Bruce Nauman. Punch and Judy II Birth & Life & Sex & Death.1985. Gouache and pencil on paper.
Huang Yong Ping. Long Scroll. 2001. Watercolor, pencil, colored pencil, and ink on joined paper.
Sergej Jensen. Untitled. 2008. Synthetic polymer paint on hemp.
