The American Dream Vs the American Reality Art Gallery
A glimpse inside the exhibition.
The United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland's first major exhibition of American printmaking from the 1960s onward is now open. And it's at the British Museum. Many people take asked why we are the venue for this extraordinary collection of modernistic and contemporary art. And why America? Why at present? What does 'the American Dream' mean at the British Museum? In fact, information technology makes perfect sense – read on to notice why…
We want to hear from you! What practice you think about the exhibition? Tweet u.s.a. @britishmuseum using #AmericanDream
Information technology might surprise you that the British Museum holds the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland'due south national collection of prints and drawings. It's a treasure trove of over 2 million works by everyone from Leonardo, Michelangelo and Dürer to Bridget Riley, David Hockney and Andy Warhol. The Museum has always collected contemporary art – in the 1750s this meant Canaletto and Hogarth, and in 2017 it includes works by American artists such as Kara Walker and Ed Ruscha.
Collecting the present is essential to the British Museum's purpose. Recent acquisitions bridge the earth, from a Grayson Perry vase to original Japanese manga drawings, and from Indigenous Australian paintings to Jasper Johns' Flags I (featured on the exhibition affiche). Future generations volition be able to reflect on these dynamic and turbulent times through these objects.
This exhibition traces the creative momentum of American art from the early 1960s through the medium of printing, charting the rise of movements similar minimalism, conceptual fine art and photorealism, to the practices of living artists working today. More than 200 works by lxx artists are on brandish, highlighting the inventiveness of American printmaking that flourished over six decades. Thanks to a deliberate strategy of collecting these artists by our curators, 70% of the works in the show are in the British Museum's drove. The biggest names in American fine art are represented: Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Chuck Close, Louise Bourgeois, Andy Warhol, all of whom innovated with printmaking to create some of their most memorable work.
It all starts with pop art, of class. Pop art sits in the public consciousness as representing all that was new and cool in the 60s, just it is not necessarily to everyone'southward gustatory modality:
'Surely pop art represents the triumph of superficiality, the decease of profundity and careful looking… What, then, is the British Museum, that bastion of careful, scholarly scrutiny, doing warmly embracing and collecting such rubbish?' Michael Glover, The Independent
With pop art, a revolutionary and indelible change in the production, marketing and consumption of art took place. Inspired past the monumental, bold and colourful imagery of post-war America (specially the powerful medium of advertising), a young generation of artists created images that defined this flow in the popular imagination. Pop art is integral to the story of printmaking, and to the story of America, so the exhibition couldn't have begun with anything else.
This exhibition has been several years in the making. Nobody could have predictable the transformative world events that now inevitably shape our visitors' perceptions of the meaning of 'the American Dream'.
'Looking at the art of Jasper Johns, including a print that gives a coat hanger the sublime authority of a Rembrandt portrait, not to mention at Robert Motherwell'southward lithographs of abstract expressionist splash-marks or powerfully chaotic prints by Willem de Kooning, I understood two things very clearly. In that location is such a thing equally American civilization. And we are watching information technology die.' Jonathan Jones, The Guardian
The conviction and assertiveness of America in the post-war smash years seems now to have disintegrated, and the very notion of the country'southward exceptionalism has been critically questioned by artists. America has ever been reinventing itself, and at present is the perfect time to seek to empathise what 'the American Dream' means today.
'With a new administration establishing itself in Washington, it feels like an apposite moment to consider how artists have reflected America as a nation over 60 tumultuous years.'
Hartwig Fischer, Director of the British Museum
The creative momentum unleashed in the 1960s persists to this day. There is also much to celebrate about the present. Equally you motion through the exhibition, the voices represented become increasingly diverse, showcasing the piece of work of women and people of colour, reflecting the changing fine art world and the advances in social equality over this period.
Every artist in the exhibition – whether they were built-in in America or made it their home – has their own American Dream, which demands our attention and makes united states re-examine our own ideas near this superpower.
'There is still cause for excitement: the last prints in the exhibition are a set of etchings by the Ethiopian-born American artist Julie Mehretu, in which swirls of complex marks propose a sense of inchoate free energy and, perhaps, optimism, amid challenging, irresolute times.' Alastair Sooke, The Telegraph
American artists continue to explore the vital and expressive potential of printmaking every bit an integral part of their aesthetic, with its power to achieve a broad and diverse audience, and address wider social and political issues.
But don't take someone else'southward word for it – see it for yourself, brand upwards your ain mind, and let u.s.a. know what you think.
The exhibition The American Dream: pop to the nowadays runs at the Museum until 18 June 2017.
Sponsored by Morgan Stanley.
Supported by the Terra Foundation for American Fine art.
Buy the book to explore the unprecedented scale, boldness and ambition of American printmaking since the 1960s.
You lot tin can besides browse a range of products inspired by the works in the exhibition, including a range of prints.
Source: https://blog.britishmuseum.org/the-american-dream-becomes-reality/
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