The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970–2020


Countering the recycled refrain that “painting is dead,” the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s recently opened exhibition, The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970–2020, suggests that painting remains in a constant state of renewal and rebirth.

The Living End assembles a body of work that cuts across geographies, histories, and contexts, reflecting painting’s progression alongside emerging technologies and changing cultures. Through works by a diverse group of 60 artists, the exhibition surveys the last 50 years of painting, focusing on landmark technological and conceptual shifts. This includes the generative relationships between still photography and painting, and video and performance art, as well as computers’ role in artmaking, from experiments with computer-assisted graphics in the mid-1960s to the mining of digital and social media culture today.

tle jh 06 resized 1
Jaqueline Humphries, “MN+//ssss” (detail) (2023), oil on linen; 114 × 127 inches (Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Gift of the American Art Foundation by exchange and the Pritzker Traubert Visionary Art Acquisition Fund, 2024.5. Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York. Photo: Ron Amstutz)

“The way that the show is organized is this mirror image that looks at how artists used early computers and early media production tools like the Xerox machine, and then how artists are now beginning to outsource the production of their work to computers, printers, other people, so on and so forth. And these two mirror images are situated at different points in history. The show is looking at a trajectory and a forward progression of these ideas from the 1960s and even before that to the present.” – Jamillah James, Manilow Senior Curator and organizer of the exhibition

tle cd 01 resized
Cheryl Donegan, “Whoa Whoa Studio (for Courbet)” (2000), video with color and sound ; 3 minutes, 21 seconds (image courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix, New York)

Comprising paintings, performances, videos, and installation works, The Living End examines how artists have challenged fundamental assumptions about painting, ultimately changing our understanding of what constitutes a painting, how they can be produced, and who can be considered a painter.

The Living End is curated by Jamillah James, Manilow Senior Curator, with Jack Schneider, Assistant Curator. It is on view at MCA Chicago through April 13, 2025.

To learn more, visit mcachicago.org/thelivingend.



Source link

About The Author

Scroll to Top