In 1909 F.T. Marinetti’s futurist manifesto appeared on the front page of Le Figaro, and less than four years later Pablo Picasso incorporated a fragment of the real newspaper into a work of art. The modern mass-media newspaper had colonized fine art.
Shock of the News, which takes its title from Robert Hughes’ popular BBC television series The Shock of the News (1980), examines the many manifestations of the “newspaper phenomenon” from 1909 to 2009, a century during which major artists engaged in a vibrant and multifaceted relationship with the printed news by co-opting, mimicking, defusing, undermining, memorializing, and rewriting newspapers. The exhibition presents works by more than sixty European and American artists, including Marinetti, Picasso, Georges Braque, Man Ray, Hannah Höch, John Heartfield, Kurt Schwitters, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Dieter Roth, Laurie Anderson, Sarah Charlesworth, Adrian Piper, and Robert Gober.
Today, as the fate of printed newspapers hangs in the balance, Shock of the News reminds us of the newspaper’s historical legacy, its cultural importance, and its continuing artisitic role.
168 pages | 102 color images, 30 black and white images | 9.5 x 11.25 inches
Exhibition opens Sunday, September 23, 2012
