Real or fake, America has become lodged in the popular imagination. A new exhibition of work by US artists explores this mythology and reconsiders what people can understand as "American."
Image: VG Bild-Kunst
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America America: How real is real?
Is the American way of life in danger? Has the American Dream turned into a nightmare? Contemporary artists fascinated by American mythology are on display in the Frieder Burda Museum in Germany's Black Forest.
Image: VG Bild-Kunst
"In Alice’s Front Yard" by Tom Wesselmann
Throughout the centuries, art has played a vital role in shining a light on culture. American contemporary artists are strongly aware of the importance of their work for provoking thought — and capturing the times for future generations. An exhibition that draws on the collection of the Frieder Burda Museum explores how such artists reflect on the American dream and way of life.
Image: VG Bild-Kunst
"Imaginary Flag for U.S.A.," William N. Copley
The flag holds a highly symbolic place in the American imagination. In 1972, surrealist William N. Copley recreated the 13 stripes of the flag but replaced the 50 stars with the word THINK. "Imaginary Flag for U.S.A." is a subversive response to ideological patriotism in America toward the end of the Vietnam War and at the beginning of the Watergate scandal. It is the exhibition's leitmotif.
Image: VG Bild-Kunst
Pop art: Smoker #10
In the 1960s, Andy Warhol turned the narrative of the American way of life on its head by focusing on the consumerism shaping everyday life. Pop artists including James Rosenquist and Tom Wesselmann (whose oil painting Smoker #10 is seen above), exploited the commercial production methods of advertising while relaying a message about the dangers that these consumer myths posed.
Image: VG Bild-Kunst
The Haunting (Triptych)
Media images continue to heavily influence the work of contemporary American artists. Perceptions of reality have increasingly been shaped as a media construct, prone to manipulation. Horrific events that hold a permanent place in the American imagination, such as an image of the planes flying into the World Trade Center on 9/11, is the subject of Robert Longo's work recast in black-and-white.
Image: VG Bild-Kunst
Scott and John
The influence of the pop art movement on American artists can be found not only in the choice of the subject matter but also the techniques used by many artists. Alex Katz, born in New York in 1927, was at the edges of the movement when he produced "Scott and John" in 1966, a painting which uses reduction to capture the essence of two young American men.
Image: VG Bild-Kunst
Cindy Sherman as "Untitled Marilyn"
Perhaps one of the most renowned American portrait photographers living today, Cindy Sherman is also something of a performance artist, posing as her subjects. Here, she portrays the long-dead celebrity Marilyn Monroe in a manner most are unaccostumed to seeing: fully clothed, not posing for the gaze. The piece is part of a larger series of work aimed at dissembling notions of female beauty.
Image: Cindy Sherman
Living Room Scene III, Eric Fischl
The so-called American way of life is a mythology produced by the media and entertainment industries. The portrayals of this falsified reality cement existing power structures but they can also call them into question. "America! America! How real is real?" has chosen works that do the latter, making clear that it is the traumas of American society that inspire artists.
Image: Eric Fischl
Jeff Koons' "Bear and Policeman"
A life-size wooden sculpture of a bear hugging a British policeman by Jeff Koons is one of the 70 pieces of contemporary artworks on display. The exhibition looks to portray reality in a new way as it responds to the question "How real is real?" It runs from December 9, 2017 through May 21, 2018 at the Frieder Burda Museum in Baden-Baden.
Image: Jeff Koons
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The United States holds a unique place in global cultural consciousness – so much so that abstract concepts like the "American dream" and the "American way of life" are studied in classrooms around the world.
Uncovering the true meaning behind these concepts – and in essence, discovering what America really is – is the aim of the latest exhibition at the Frieder Burda contemporary art museum in Baden-Baden in Germany's Black Forest region.
"America! America! How Real Is Real?" opens December 9 and features some 70 masterpieces of US contemporary art that explore the mythologies underlining notions of America. The exhibit responds to the present political situation by posing questions about the intersection of the media and entertainment industry with fake news and alternative facts.
Hard-hitting contemporary artists
The exhibition was initially conceived by curator Helmut Friedel in spring of 2017 as a show that focused on the rich collection of American art that the museum owns. Sculptures by Jeff Koons, photographs by Cindy Sherman and portraits by pop artists like Andy Warhol were all gathered to create a common theme that explores the divergence between fact and reality in a political era where what is real or fake is increasingly ambiguous.
Jeff Koons is among the artists in the permanent collection of the Frieder Burda MuseumImage: picture-alliance/dpa/D.Deme
"It is very important to us that this exhibition stimulates an exchange of thoughts on current issues such as 'our attitudes to the truth' and 'respect for the truth' in both an individual and a global context," said Henning Schaper, who has been director of Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden since May 2017.
Opening with scenes of disaster — such as Andy Warhol's silkscreens of mug shots, the electric chair or car crashes — the exhibition juxtaposes catastrophic realities with idyllic depictions of the "American way of life" by Hollywood and the media.
With questions about capitalism and consumerism first raised by the pop art movement of the 1960s remaining at the center of contemporary American art, "America America: How real is real?" doesn't present easy answers but instead provokes thought about the role of the US and its visual memory.
A triptych by Robert Longo explores the media's obsession with documenting newsworthy events 24/7 by creating a sharp black-and-white image of planes flying into the World Trade Center in 2001. A posed portrait by Cindy Sherman, made to look like Marilyn Monroe, continues Warhol's project of looking hard at celebrity culture and its impact on contemporary life.
Cindy Sherman's "Untitled Marilyn" from 1982 refocuses the myth of celebrity in America Image: Cindy Sherman
These contrasts are set up in a way that provokes European museum-goers to consider their own reality. Speaking of the development of the exhibition, curator Helmut Friedel notes how it responded to a shifting political environment over the months it was in the works.
"It became clear that, under the circumstances of changing and confusing political stances and statements by the US president, who was still new to us at the time, the question of what we had hitherto had in common with North America would take us beyond the confines of our own collection of abstract expressionism," says Friedel.
Varied in both their medium and their message, the 70 works of art on display in Baden-Baden may pose more questions about perceptions of reality than they answer. This relationship between real and fake, however, could be said to be part of the American artistic imagination.
"America! America! How Real Is Real?" runs from December 9, 2017 through May 21, 2018 at the Frieder Burda Museum in Baden-Baden.
