New York art in the 60s

The Jewish Museum has an exhibit of New York art between 1962 and 1964. It straddles painting sculpture music and dance, and the politics of these years which included the I have a Dream speech by Martin Luther King, and the Kennedy assassination. It recreates the atmosphere of turbulence, experimentation, and the blurring of lines across art genres. Works that particulary stood out were (in order of the images):

  • a sculpture called untitled (hungblock) 1962, by Mark di Suvero about the massive amount of building and demolition going on in NYC (nothing changes!).

  • Butterworth Box II (1963) by Carolee Schneeman - moving painting beyond the canvas.

  • Warhol’s Empire (1965) film - an extremely still film, projected tidily from above.

  • Noguchi’s Shrine of Aphrodite (1962) made for the set in a Martha Graham dance.

  • A bunch of Rauschenberg screenprint paintings.

  • Several works relating New York’s role in the slave trade, including one by Robert Indiana called The Rebecca (1962) relating to a slave trading ship. He used some brass stencils he found in his lower Manhattan neighborhood.