Fast Forward: Painting from the 1980s - Whitney Museum Exhibit - Jan 27–May 14, 2017

Upcoming Exhibit at the Whitney Museum in NYC
Fast Forward: Painting from the 1980s
Jan 27–May 14, 2017

Opening Jan 27–May 14, 2017 ; Fast Forward: Painting from the 1980s exhibit offers a focused look at painting from this decade with works drawn entirely from the Museum’s collection. The exhibition will be on view in the Museum’s eighth-floor Hurst Family Galleries.

The exhibition features work by artists identified with the 1980s— Jean-Michel Basquiat, Sherrie Levine, David Salle, and Julian Schnabel—as well as by a significant number of less celebrated painters.

Often through exuberant work that engaged with the heroic gesture or pop imagery, these artists explored the traditions of figuration and history painting, and offered new interpretations of abstraction.

Many addressed fundamental questions about art-making in their work, while others took on political issues covering AIDS, feminism, gentrification, and war.

Far from dead, artists renegotiated their commitment to painting in the 1980s, and in the face of a media-saturated environment.

The medium suddenly came to represent an important intersection between new ways of seeing and a seemingly traditional way of making art—one full of possibility and thriving as many artists actively re-imagined what painting could be.

 

Fast Forward: Painting from the 1980s is organized by Jane Panetta, associate curator, with Melinda Lang, curatorial assistant.  Don't miss it!