Exposed! – Revealing Sources in Contemporary Art
Exposed! — Revealing Sources in Contemporary Art
August 15, 2009 – October 4, 2009
Delaware Art Museum
The Delaware Art Museum presents Exposed! — Revealing Sources in Contemporary Art, featuring paintings, prints, and photographs alongside images of the works they reference, on view August 15, 2009 – October 4, 2009. Since the 1960s a wide range of artists—including Andy Warhol, Richard Prince, and Ellen Gallagher—have made pictures that reference specific works of art and popular culture. Displaying these pieces alongside images of their sources, Exposed! explores artistic strategies of quotation and appropriation. The featured works present various relationships to their sources, from respectful homage to cultural critique. Artists who appropriate the work of others—especially when they do so with photographic fidelity—face harsh criticism and even lawsuits for copyright infringement.
Exposed! includes works of art by Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Prince, Jeff Koons, Robert Colescott, Grace Hartigan, Ellen Gallagher, and Glenn Ligon, among others. Some pieces are from the Delaware Art Museum’s collection, and some are on loan from private collections.
A central figure in the story of appropriation art, Richard Prince earned international fame for re-photographing Marlboro advertisements and fashion spreads. He continues to engage with popular imagery, as in his recent nurse paintings, based on the covers of pulp fiction novels. The exhibition features several photographs and paintings by Prince, dating from 1982 through 2006. Painter Grace Hartigan’s vision of Eleanor of Aquitaine (1983), Queen of France and later Queen of England, was inspired by Tom Tierney’s 1982 book of historical paper dolls. In the book and the painting, two versions of Eleanor are presented, one in her regalia and another holding a book, perhaps in reference to her role as a literary patron. New York artist Heather Bennett restages ads from fashion magazines, using herself and clothing and props purchased at thrift stores, in photographs like Untitled (Versace) from 2001.
Please be advised that some works in this exhibition may be unsuitable for children under 13 years of age.
Press Preview
* Thursday, August 13 | 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
Heather Campbell Coyle, Curator of American Art at the Delaware Art Museum, will lead a tour and answer questions. Please RSVP to Dennis Lawson by Monday, August 10.
Special Event
* Exposed! Gallery Chat
Friday, September 11 | 6:00 p.m. | Free
Heather Campbell Coyle, Curator of American Art at the Delaware Art Museum, will lead a tour and answer questions.
Sponsors
In Delaware, this exhibition is made possible, in part, by grants from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.