"The color red, connotative of intense passion, predominated in the two cramped spaces forming this installation. One important theme here was regressive psychological fantasy. But there was also a sense that ancient knowledge was being...
"As in certain paintings by Francis Bacon, existential givens were made stubbornly palpable in Guston's pictures. Recurrent images such as a head with a single wide-open eye, wrist-watches, bare light-bulbs, or cigarette butts spoke of bouts...
Post-Partum Document, 1983 [book]. From Documentation I, Analysed Faecal [Fecal] Stains and Feeding Charts (prototype), [work produced] 1974. "One of the oldest themes of Western art, mother and child, was ironically made compatible with...
Installation, L'Attico Gallery, Rome. Detail of wall drawing in pencil. Draughtsmen: Climbo, Piccari, Battista, Pranovi. "In the early 1960s LeWitt had largely devoted himself to producing modular open cube structures made from wood. His 'wall...
"Whilst clearly representing a critique of free expression, Lichtenstein's 'brushstrokes', like most of his other Pop works, had an exact comic-book source. They initially derived from a strip entitled 'The Painting' published in Charlton...
"Although resident in America, Morley was the first winner of the Turner Prize in 1984. Funded by the 'Patrons of New Art' affiliated to London's Tate Gallery, this prize was subsequently awarded annually for 'outstanding contributions' to...
"This painting deliberately combines a host of allusions to Spanish culture such as the stark black/white contrasts of Goya, Velasquez, and Picasso, the Spanish poet Lorca's lament to a dead bullfighter, 'Llanto por Ignacio Jánchez mejías',...
"Prince's early 'appropriations' from advertising, of which this is an example, have interesting connections with his later practice. After 1985 Prince started to employ verbal jokes in his works. They were often silkscreened as texts across...
"Ad Reinhardt's satirical cartoons, which contrasted sharply with his practice as a painter, dated back to the 1930s and 1940s. His strong Communist sympathies during that period had informed a series of cartoons for left-wing journals. By the...
Oil, house paint, crayon, and pencil on canvas. "The classical setting and celebration of intellectual probity evoked in the title's reference to Raphael's School of Athens (c.1510-12, Vatican, Rome) are offset by markings evoking bodily...
Prints; Screen prints; Allusions; Death; Disasters; Tragedies; Accidents; Automobiles; Vehicles; Dead persons; Wounds & injuries; Voyeurism; Social aspects; Social classes
"The use of serial repetition here, as in other early Warhol works, relates interestingly to Minimalist uses of repetition. The reciprocally ironic relation between Warhol and the Minimalists came to a head in 1964. Warhol exhibited a series...
Photograph first published in the New York evening newspaper PM Daily, 7 September, 1944; "The freelance newspaper photographer Arthur Fellig, better known as 'Weegee', was notorious in New York in the 1930s for being the first to arrive at...
"This is an early example of Buren's use of stripe motifs in a public context. He has continued the practice to the present. For instance, in 1997 in Munster, Germany, his contribution to a festival of site-specific sculpture consisted of...
"This is an early example of Buren's use of stripe motifs in a public context. He has continued the practice to the present. For instance, in 1997 in Munster, Germany, his contribution to a festival of site-specific sculpture consisted of...
"The sacks used in these canvases often displayed stenciled letters relating to their commercial origins. This suggests some link with the German prewar Dadaist, Kurt Schwitters who made collages from printed waste paper. However, Burri,...
Sculpture; Metalwork; Maps; Industrialization; Industry; Economic & social conditions; Social aspects; Industrial arbitration; Social classes; Wealth; Poverty; Economic & industrial aspects
"Fabro made his first sculpture in the Italia series in 1968. Dozens of variations followed in subsequent years. Another theme established in 1968 was that of 'Feet'. This involved the artist in producing a series of bizarre sculptural...
"The Hungarian-born photographer Brassai (Gyula Halasz) moved to Paris in the early 1920s and became friendly with avant-garde figures such as Picasso. In the 1920s and 1930s he photographed the low life of the city, deeply influenced by a...
Sculpture; Photographs; Mixed media; Allusions; Symbols; Hair; Body parts; Animals
"In the decade before her premature death in 1996, Chadwick developed an iconography which has links with the thought of Georges Bataille […] In Nostalgie de la Boue (1990) two rounded cibachrome transparencies were hung one above the other....
"Warhol's 'wallpaper' initially decorated a room at Leo Castelli's New York gallery in April, 1966. Another room was devoted to his floating Silver Clouds (helium-filled silver pillows)." (Caption, p.111); "[Robert] Rauschenberg's...