Bye Bye American Pie
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Larry Clark
Nan Goldin
Jenny Holzer
Barbara Kruger
Paul McCarthy
Cady Noland
Curated by Philip Larratt-Smith
29 March–4 June 2012
Malba
www.malba.org.ar
Bye Bye American Pie explores the changing aspects of American culture through the work of seven major American artists: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Paul McCarthy, and Cady Noland. This exhibition will mark the first time that these artists have been exhibited together in Buenos Aires.
Taking its title from Don McLean’s folk anthem “American Pie” and conceived as a follow-up to Larratt-Smith’s exhibition “Andy Warhol, Mr. America” (2009), Bye Bye American Pie showcases key works by these seven artists that both reflect and critique the evolving state of American culture from the 1970s to the present.
The presentation of these artists together within a single exhibition aims to offer a sustained survey of a particular tendency within American cultural history, when the high tide of American civilization which Warhol so brilliantly celebrated gave way to critique and deconstruction, and when a single dominant culture reinforced by television and Hollywood broke up into multiple subcultures. In the words of the curator, “the work of these artists foreshadows the gradual decline of America not only as an economic and political hegemon but also as a culture and an ideal.”
The accompanying publication in Spanish and English features the curator’s essay “Civilization and Its Discontents” as well as commissioned essays by the American novelist and cultural critic Gary Indiana (“The Fall of the House of Mickey Mouse”) and the British philosopher and writer John Gray (“The Electrographic Dream”). It will also include a full-colour plate section and a visual timeline of the postwar period.
Malba – Fundación Costantini
Avda. Figueroa Alcorta 3415
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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