"Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today" Exhibition
The Museum of Modern Art
This event has ended.
"Color Chart" celebrates a paradox: the lush beauty that results when contemporary artists assign color decisions to chance, readymade source, or arbitrary system. Midway through the twentieth century, long-held convictions regarding the spiritual truth or scientific validity of particular colors gave way to an excitement about color as a mass-produced and standardized commercial product. The Romantic quest for personal expression instead became Andy Warhol's "I want to be a machine;" the artistry of mixing pigments was eclipsed by Frank Stella's "Straight out of the can; it can't get better than that." "Color Chart" is the first major exhibition devoted to this pivotal transformation, featuring work by some forty artists ranging from Ellsworth Kelly and Gerhard Richter to Sherrie Levine and Damien Hirst.
[Image: Jim Lambie "ZOBOP! (detail)" (2006) Vinyl Tape Dimensions variable]
Media
Schedule
from March 02, 2008 to May 12, 2008
Artist(s)
Bass Jan Ader, Cory Arcangel, John Baldessari, Jennifer Bartlett, David Batchelor, Alighiero Boetti, Angela Bulloch, Daniel Buren, André Candere, John Chamberlain, Lix Deschenes, Jan Dibbets, Jim Dine, Marcel Duchamp, Dan Flavin, Katharina Fritsch, Dan Graham, Damien Hirst, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, On Kawara, Mike Kelley, Ellsworth Kellly, Byron Kim, Yves Klein, Jim Lambie, Sol LeWitt, Sherrie Levine, François Morellet, Bruce Nauman, Blinky Palermo, Giulio Paolini, Michel Parmentier, Walid Raad, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, Edward Ruscha, Richard Serra, Frank Stella, Niele Toroni, Andy Warhol, Carrie Mae Weems, Lawrence Weiner, Christopher WilliamsBass Jan Ader, Cory Arcangel, John Baldessari, Jennifer Bartlett, David Batchelor, Alighiero Boetti, Angela Bulloch, Daniel Buren, André Candere, John Chamberlain, Lix Deschenes, Jan Dibbets, Jim Dine, Marcel Duchamp, Dan Flavin, Katharina Fritsch, Dan Graham, Damien Hirst, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, On Kawara, Mike Kelley, Ellsworth Kellly, Byron Kim, Yves Klein, Jim Lambie, Sol LeWitt, Sherrie Levine, François Morellet, Bruce Nauman, Blinky Palermo, Giulio Paolini, Michel Parmentier, Walid Raad, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, Edward Ruscha, Richard Serra, Frank Stella, Niele Toroni, Andy Warhol, Carrie Mae Weems, Lawrence Weiner, Christopher Williams
Reviews
A surprisingly intelligent, even a cerebral, show, "Color Chart" treats color in a way even those of us more inclined to monochromatic minimalism will enjoy. (Be sure to turn your back on the Dan Flavin for a gemlike contemplative moment.)
My own personal highlights were the On Kawara pieces and Cory Arcangel's brilliant "Colors," which (however unintentionally) riffs nicely on MoMA's own chromatic-barcode design language, but there really is something here for nearly everyone. One of the most unexpected pleasures of the year.