Albertina Modern, Vienna
2021–2022
October 17, 2021–February 13, 2022
The 1980s is considered by some to be the most important decade for the art of our age. For the first time, art was no longer determined by an all-dominant style, such as abstraction or Pop. The 1980s stand out for an unprecedented stylistic pluralism that resorted to the picture pool of past decades: it was the cradle of postmodernism. The exhibition The 80s. Art of the Eighties (2022) at ALBERTINA MODERN presented over one hundred and sixty works by artists who defined this decade and whose work continues to influence art in the twenty-first century.
Artists such as Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Sherrie Levine, and Robert Longo are among the first representatives of the so-called Pictures Generation. This loose grouping of artists goes back to the legendary Pictures exhibition curated by Douglas Crimp at Artists Space in New York in 1977. At the time it is no longer about depicting the perceived world; instead, they are making pictures of pictures: usually, new pictures are created with and after existing pictures by others. Sherrie Levine, who pursues this practice of appropriation with extreme resolution, cites Jorge Luis Borges and his short story “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” (1939) in which the Argentine storyteller creates a fictitious writer. Borges’s story of the Knight of the Sad Countenance is identical to that of Miguel de Cervantes—word for word. Sherrie Levine’s pictures of pictures are, however, not exactly the same; her reproductions of great masters of modernism differ from the originals in size, materiality, and technique.
Learn more at the Albertina Modern.