Overview

A fresh take on the legacy of the group of artists known as the Pictures Generation, reinterpreting their work as haunted by the history of fascism and the threat of its return. The artists of the Pictures Generation, converging on New York City in the late 1970s, indelibly changed the shape of American art. It has long been thought that this group's main contribution was to rebel against abstraction by bringing back figural techniques and borrowing liberally from the aesthetics of mass media. In Pictures and the Past, however, art critic and historian Alexander Bigman presents us with a bold new interpretation of the artists' most significant work, in particular its recurring evocations of fascist iconography. Challenging conventional narratives, Bigman argues that the artists of the original Pictures show, curated by Douglas Crimp in 1977—especially Sarah Charlesworth, Jack Goldstein, Troy Brauntuch, Robert Longo, and Gretchen Bender—posed pressing questions about what it means to perceive the world historically in a society saturated by images. He argues that their traumatic references represent not only a coded form of political commentary about the 1980s, but also a pioneering reflection on the inherently political nature of collective memory writ large. Throughout, Bigman situates their work within a larger cultural context comprising developments in music, fashion, cinema, and literature. Pictures and the Past probes the shifting relationships between art, popular culture, and memory in the 1970s and '80s, examining how the specter of fascism loomed for artists then—and the ways it still looms for us today.

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Reviews

“If you thought that you knew what the postmodern moment in New York art was all about, it turns out that you didn’t. Bigman sees through the theoretical camouflage to discern a more profound reckoning with the cultural moment of the 1980s in terms of what Susan Sontag famously called ‘fascinating fascism.’ His penetrating analysis reveals the artists involved as deeper and better than even their many admirers have been able to recognize.” * Thomas Crow, author of The Artist in the Counterculture * “Pictures and the Past is a necessary and provocative reconsideration of the Pictures Generation. Bigman’s carefully crafted, thoroughly researched account not only makes evident the cultural acuity of these artists but also demonstrates why they are more relevant than ever today. This book will be a touchstone for scholars and artists for many years to come.” * Alexander Dumbadze, author of Bas Jan Ader: Death Is Elsewhere * “In this illuminating book, Bigman challenges any erroneous misgivings about the Pictures Generation by brilliantly reconsidering the discursive context in which the famous artists worked. There he finds that their art was deeply political at its core, spinning from the collective memory of interwar fascism.” * Andrés Mario Zervigón, author of Photography and Germany * “With impressive erudition and nuance, Bigman shows that the frequent ellipses, obliqueness, and ambivalence of America’s Pictures Generation imagery conjures up not only the vagaries of collective memory but also the reactionary drift of much 1970s and ’80s culture in America. Pictures and the Past offers keen insight into what Europe’s recent fascist past meant to these artists, but it also suggests what it might mean to us in our embattled present.” * Ara H. Merjian, author of Against the Avant-Garde *

Author Information

Alexander Bigman is an art critic and historian. His writing has appeared in several publications, including Art History, the Art Bulletin, and Art in America. He lives in New York City, and this is his first book.

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