This website collects cookies to deliver a better user experience
Books & Magazines : Walker Publications/Exhibition Catalogues
$50.00
A comprehensive catalogue of the 2012 exhibition, featuring essays by exhibition curator Helen Molesworth and art historians Kobena Mercer, Frazer Ward, and Johanna Burton.
Throughout the 1980s, a series of ruptures permanently changed the character of the art world. Art veered between radical and conservative, capricious and political, socially engaged and art-historically aware. Even as Reaganomics dramatically expanded art as a luxury commodity, postmodernism further challenged the very status of representation and shifted artists’ sense of their role in society. This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s surveys these and other developments with more than 100 works, including paintings, sculpture, photography, video, audio, works on paper, and documentary material by some 80 artists.
Four sections bring together competing factions of this transformative decade. “The End Is Near” explores the end of painting, the end of the counterculture, and the end of history. “Democracy” focuses on artists’ work in the street and their burgeoning awareness and exploitation of mass media, as well as a broader commitment to the political and the increased prominence of Central American artists and artists of color. “Gender Trouble” shows work evolving out of 1970s feminism, expanding gender roles and addressing new ideas about sexuality and the human figure in art. “Desire and Longing” presents the art of appropriation in relation to the growing visibility of queer culture sparked by the AIDS crisis.
In deliberately crossing these themes, this contentious exhibition counters the cynicism and irony with which art of this period is sometimes viewed. It presents a vivid portrait of artists struggling with their wants, needs, and desires in an era of political and aesthetic urgency—and situates our contemporary moment within the history of art of the recent past.
You have three shipping options at checkout:
Once all of your items are ready for pickup and you've received your Ready for Pickup notification (remember: don't come to the store unless you've received this).
To collect your in-store pickup order once you have received the "Ready for Pickup" notification, please come to the Shop (located in the main lobby off Vineland Place) during the Walker Art Center's open hours. We are currently unable to do curbside pickup.
Shipping rates depend on the selected shipping speed and weight/size of the items. Please allow several days for your order to be processed and shipped.
If you have any additional questions please contact shop@walkerart.org.