cover image The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984

The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984

Douglas Eklund. Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, $60 (350pp) ISBN 978-0-300-14892-3

A gleeful sense of irony takes center stage in this coffee table catalog of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Pictures Generation exhibition. Immersed in the political era book-ended by Nixon and Reagan, the artists here came of age during mass media's first years, and their wildly divergent experiments with Pop, minimal and conceptual art hold a common concern with social commentary, including race relations, sexuality, feminism and consumerism. Of Eklund's three essays, the Met associate curator's opener, ""Image Art after Conceptualism,"" is the standout, examining the photographers who hailed from the then-nascent West Coast Institute of Art and made up the ""CalArts Mafia."" The movement concerned itself with deconstructing the myth and artifice behind stereotypical images of women and minorities, and the subtle dismantling of advertising campaigns and icons, preceding by decades the culture jamming/ad busting trend of the 1990s and 2000s. Long overdue for a retrospective, this class of artists produces a stunning collection; though the text is largely aimed at professionals or academics, this handsome volume should appeal to any reader interested in conceptual arts.