SYNTHETIC

WHITNEY MUSEUM TO OPEN SYNTHETIC ON JANUARY 22 NEW YORK, November 20, 2008 – The direction of post-war American art changed dramatically in the 1960s when artists began using a range of new products that altered the face of painting and sculpture. Synthetic polymer paints—popularly known as acrylics—became the first widely used alternative to oil painting, the technique that had dominated art since the Renaissance. Painters approached abstraction differently, exploiting new physical properties of paint; others found ways to alter images and achieve a synthetic look, creating subjects with a curious relationship to reality. Synthetic, a new installation of works from the Museum’s permanent collection explores how these new materials also led to new concepts; it opens at the Whitney Museum of American Art on January 22, 2009, in the second-floor Mildred & Herbert Lee Galleries. Whitney curator Carter E. Foster, who organized the exhibition, notes: “These new approaches advanced one of the fundamental ideas of modern painting: acknowledging flatness as part of a painting’s status as object and picture. Other artists, working with images rather than abstractly, explored how synthetic and commercial materials could impact meaning. The new emphasis on surface took on metaphorical as well as material importance.”

The show includes works by artists such as Morris Louis, who explored the physical properties of the new paints, especially their ability to stain and be poured directly on raw canvas; Andy Warhol, who inextricably merged process with subject matter in taking images from popular culture; and Richard Artschwager, who used commercially made materials to create a slick, plastic look that was inherently part of what was represented. Other artists include Lynda Benglis, Chuck Close, Peter Halley, Roy Lichtenstein, Kenny Scharf, Frank Stella, and Joe Zucker.

SYNTHETIC

Künstler: Morris Louis, Richard Artschwager, Peter Halley, Frank Stella, Kenny Scharf, Lynda Benglis, Andy Warhol, Chuck Close, Roy Lichtenstein, Joe Zucker ...