Works on Paper: 100 Years
As much as genre does to sort, classify, and package form, content, and style, its uses slyly evade a straightforward understanding of what strictly constitutes pictorial meaning. Western art historiography informs much of our judgment of genre in the visual realm鈥攑articularly in painting, as the discipline rose to exalted status in seventeenth-century French academic circles. By the mid-nineteenth century, the nationalized institutions that dictated the painting鈥檚 hierarchy of genres began to lose aesthetic authority, and classical pedagogy was troubled by the increasing industrialization and modernization that swept Europe. And yet, we are still left with the traces of this didactic and widely expatiated order that helps us register the pictorial image.
Though at points it has maintained inconsistent standards of value and importance, genre has perhaps always been a flexible framework of limits. Even with the pervasion of abstraction in the twentieth century, a time of great global upheaval, the need to categorize and organize compositions found other indices, primarily vis-脿-vis the grid. If there is no conclusion or explanation that would satisfy our understanding of genre, which existed before the establishment of any such Acad茅mie des beaux-arts, it can be possibly considered a drive鈥攁ccommodating, among other wants, an innate desire to taxonomize, understand how stories can be told, or visually capture and perceive a moment or sensibility.
This group exhibition presents works on paper from the past century that variously engage with genre. By both adhering to and turning away from this seemingly arbitrary classification system, this selection of both preparatory and finished works considers the uses and desires of genre and, ultimately, genre鈥檚 expansiveness and mutability.
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As much as genre does to sort, classify, and package form, content, and style, its uses slyly evade a straightforward understanding of what strictly constitutes pictorial meaning. Western art historiography informs much of our judgment of genre in the visual realm鈥攑articularly in painting, as the discipline rose to exalted status in seventeenth-century French academic circles. By the mid-nineteenth century, the nationalized institutions that dictated the painting鈥檚 hierarchy of genres began to lose aesthetic authority, and classical pedagogy was troubled by the increasing industrialization and modernization that swept Europe. And yet, we are still left with the traces of this didactic and widely expatiated order that helps us register the pictorial image.
Though at points it has maintained inconsistent standards of value and importance, genre has perhaps always been a flexible framework of limits. Even with the pervasion of abstraction in the twentieth century, a time of great global upheaval, the need to categorize and organize compositions found other indices, primarily vis-脿-vis the grid. If there is no conclusion or explanation that would satisfy our understanding of genre, which existed before the establishment of any such Acad茅mie des beaux-arts, it can be possibly considered a drive鈥攁ccommodating, among other wants, an innate desire to taxonomize, understand how stories can be told, or visually capture and perceive a moment or sensibility.
This group exhibition presents works on paper from the past century that variously engage with genre. By both adhering to and turning away from this seemingly arbitrary classification system, this selection of both preparatory and finished works considers the uses and desires of genre and, ultimately, genre鈥檚 expansiveness and mutability.
Artists on show
- Adam Pendleton
- Alfred Kubin
- Alice Neel
- Ana Mendieta
- Betty Brown
- Bill Jensen
- Calvin Marcus
- Craig Boagey
- Cy Twombly
- Francesca Facciola
- Giangiacomo Rossetti
- Ginny Casey
- Grandma Mozelle
- Hannah Taurins
- Isabella Ducrot
- Jean Dubuffet
- Joan Mitchell
- Joe Brainard
- John Currin
- Josh Smith
- Leon Golub
- Lisa Ponti
- Louis Eisner
- Louise Bourgeois
- Marco Pariani
- Marcus Jahmal
- Mel Odom
- Mike Kelley
- Nancy Spero
- Nate Lowman
- Okiki Akinfe
- Olivia van Kuiken
- Paul Thek
- Philip Guston
- Rachel Feinstein
- Rachel Harrison
- Richard Prince
- Rita Ackermann
- Robert Colescott
- Robert Delaunay
- Robert Nava
- Robert Rauschenberg
- Sable Elyse Smith
- Sandro Chia
- Sara Knowland
- Sedrick Chisom
- Stanley Whitney
- Steven Shearer
- Tishan Hsu
- Tracey Emin
- Vito Acconci
- Walter Price
- William Pope.L
- Willie Stewart
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My friends, come one, come all! The Amanita Gallery has brought the greatest show on earth to the Lower East Side! Fifty-nine works on paper by fifty-four artists: a glorious, international century.
