
Talent
David Robbins
1986
Nostalgia as Resistance
1988
This exhibition was part of a two-part show at both PS.1 and The Clocktower intended to examine the interweaving of art and politics in post-War art. An important element of the historical section was a reconstruction of several installations made by the Independent Group in London in the early 50s. This was a group of British artists and architects responding to a sudden flood of American popular culture in the years of the nuclear tests and the Korean War. I was asked to consider how my generation of artists, working in New York, were responding to the explosive growth of mass media and manipulative meanness of public politics in the Reagan/Thatcher years. In the accompanying essay I wrote a first draft of a history of what came to be called the “Pictures Generation.”

Times Square Installation
Jenny Holzer
1982

Eat Sugar Spend Money
Jessica Diamond
1988

Cosmological Painting
Matt Mullican
1988

Untitled
Barbara Kruger
1981

Untitled
Richard Prince
1987

After Rodchenko
Sherrie Levine
1987
