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5/10/2012

Destroy the Picture

Museum of Contemporary Art - MOCA, Los Angeles

curated by Paul Schimmel

Los Angeles—The Museum of Contemporary Art presents Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void, 1949–1962 on view at MOCA Grand Avenue from October 6, 2012, through January 14, 2013, as part of its fall 2012 exhibition program. The exhibition will focus on one of the most significant consequences of the rise of abstraction in 20th-century painting: artists’ literal assault on the picture plane. Responding to the social and political climate of the postwar period—especially the crisis of humanity resulting from the atomic bomb—artists in the United States and abroad ripped, cut, burned, or affixed objects to the traditionally two- dimensional canvas. Painting the Void marks the first time that these strategies have been considered together as a coherent mode of artistic production. It presents an opportunity to reconsider the profound repercussions of this approach in the realm of painting: from artists’ early experiments with the materiality of gesture to the expansion of the medium to incorporate performance, time-based, and assemblage strategies.

The exhibition focuses in particular on many of the earliest experiments of artists who moved the two- dimensional medium of painting towards the three-dimensionality of sculpture.

Curated by former MOCA Chief Curator Paul Schimmel, Painting the Void will feature more than 85 breakthrough works created between the late 1940s and the early 1960s by 26 artists from Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The exhibition is among the first of its kind to address the global nature of artmaking in the immediate postwar period and the ways it laid the groundwork for contemporary conditions of globalization. Painting the Void will address how physical and cultural destruction allowed for the emergence of new artistic practices across diverse movements including abstract expressionism, pop art, nouveau réalisme, Viennese actionism, and décollage, and the work of groups such as Gutai and Zero. While acknowledging the importance of such categories, the exhibition will traverse national and art historical boundaries to create an innovative, expansive view of international artmaking in the aftermath of World War II. Painting the Void will reignite these dynamic artistic conversations on the walls of the museum.

“Painting the Void is an important addition to MOCA’s exemplary record of historical, survey exhibitions,” said MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch.

The exhibition features a number of important loans from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, Centre Georges Pompidou, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and others. Notable works include Alberto Burri’s Sacchi (sacks), Buchi (holes), and Combustioni (burning) series; Niki de Saint Phalle’s Tirs (shoot pieces); affichiste (torn-poster) works by François Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Mimmo Rotella, and Jacques Villeglé; Lucio Fontana’s Concetti spaziali (spatial concepts); Yves Klein’s Fire Paintings made just before his death; Robert Rauschenberg’s seminal Black Paintings from the early 1950s; and Salvatore Scarpitta’s bandaged canvases. A number of works by Antoni Tàpies and Jean Fautrier, drawn exclusively from MOCA’s Panza holdings, a 1984 purchase from Count Giuseppe and Mrs. Giovanna Panza di Biumo of Milan that encompasses 80 seminal works of abstract expressionism and pop art, will be included as well. For the first time since 2000 almost the entire Panza Collection will be on view at MOCA Grand Avenue through January 14, 2013.

“Painting the Void explores a formative period in art history after World War II when a diverse range of artists from countries throughout the world began to define their practice in terms of the dialectic of destruction and creation,” said Schimmel.

A majority of the artists in this exhibition traveled internationally throughout the 1950s, directly engaging with peers on the other side of the globe. However, existing scholarly accounts often obscure this lively history of international dialogue and democratic collaboration and focus instead on dramatic historical ruptures during the postwar period. Painting the Void will provide an important counterpoint to such established accounts, emphasizing instead a shared, international artistic sensibility that took shape in the context of devastating global change.

A fully illustrated, 250-page catalogue, with color reproductions of all works, co-published with Rizzoli, will accompany the exhibition. The book includes an essay by Schimmel that gives a general historical overview and explains the links between Painting the Void and Out of Actions; writings about international dialogues centered in Italy by Nicholas Cullinan, curator at the Tate Modern, London; an investigation of the role of the “nomadic” French critic Pierre Restany in establishing global networks of artistic exchange by Astrid Handa- Gagnard, art historian from Paris; a discussion of the emergence of the Gutai group by Shoichi Hirai, Hyogo Museum, Japan; an essay about Euro-American interactions by Robert Storr, Yale University; and an exhibition chronology that tracks roughly a decade’s worth of international exhibitions and interlinked formal activity of the two dozen artists in the exhibition, by Project Coordinator Sarah-Neel Smith.

Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void, 1949-1962 is presented by the Steven A. and Alexandra M. Cohen Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Major support of the exhibition is provided by The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, Sterling Ruby in honor of Paul Schimmel, and Mandy and Cliff Einstein.

Generous support is provided by the LLWW Foundation, Lillian P. Lovelace, Herta and Paul Amir, The Audrey and Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, and Susan and David Gersh.

Additional support is provided by Étant donnés, the French-American Fund for Contemporary Art; The Japan Foundation; The Dedalus Foundation; Wonmi and Kihong Kwon; Cynthia Miscikowski and Ring-Miscikowski Trust; Dallas Price-Van Breda; Lois G. Rosen; Jane Siegal; Pamela Smith; Beth Swofford; and Pamela West.

In-kind media support is provided by KCRW 89.9 FM.

IMAGES: Salvatore Scarpitta, Racer's Pillow, 1963, canvas, wood, canvas straps with metal hardware, cloth, resin, and paint, 61 x 48 x 4 in., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, bequest of B.H. Friedman

MEDIA CONTACTS
MOCA
Lyn Winter, Director of Communications
Tel 213 633 5390
lwinter@moca.org
Nancy Lee, PR Coordinator
Tel 213 621 1788
nlee@moca.org

ART TALK WITH PAUL SCHIMMEL
Sunday, October 7, 3pm
MOCA Grand Avenue
Join exhibition curator Paul Schimmel for a walkthrough and discussion of Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void, 1949-1962.
INFO education@moca.org; no reservations necessary

MOCA GRAND AVENUE
250 South Grand Avenue - Los Angeles, CA 90012
MUSEUM HOURS
MON 11am–5pm
TUES, WED CLOSED
THURS 11am–8pm
FRI 11am–5pm
SAT, SUN 11am–6pm
Closed New Year's Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day.
ADMISSION
General Admission: $12
Students with I.D.: $7
Seniors (65+): $7
Children under 12: Free
Jurors with I.D.: Free
Free Thursday Evenings:
Admission to MOCA Grand Avenue is free every Thursday, 5–8pm, courtesy of Wells Fargo.

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