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Jasper Johns: Pop Art Before Pop Art
In this HENI Talk, the internationally recognised art critic and curator Robert Storr explores the work of American painter Jasper Johns (b. 1930). Recognised for his encaustic paintings of flags, targets and maps, Johns’s ‘Neo-Dada’ works helped to formalise a shift in post-war American art from Abstract Expressionism towards Pop art.
Storr provides a unique and incisive account of Johns’s practice, informed by his longstanding professional relationship with the artist that began in the late 1960s when they first met in New York.
Time Period:
20th century
Themes:
Robert Storr is a curator, critic, and painter. From 1990 until 2002 he worked at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he was curator and then senior curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture. His exhibitions there included, 'DISLOCATIONS', 'Modern Art Despite Modernism', and retrospectives of Robert Ryman, Tony Smith, Chuck Close, Gerhard Richter, Max Beckmann, and Elizabeth Murray. From 1990 to 2000 he directed MoMA's Projects program devoted to contemporary art, for which he organized small monographic shows by Art Spiegelman, Franz West, Tom Friedman, and others. In 2002 he was named the first Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. From 2006 to 2016 he served as the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean of the Yale University School of Art, where he continues to be a professor of painting. In 2007 he served as Artistic Director of the Venice Biennale, the first American to hold that position.
Since 1982, his essays, reviews, and columns have appeared in Art in America, Art Press, Frieze, Artforum, Parkett, Corriere della Sera, and other magazines and journals. He is the author of numerous catalogues and books -- most recently, of Intimate Geometries: The Life and Work of Louise Bourgeois (2016), for which he received the 2017 Filaf d'or Award, as well as the 2017 Filaf Award for Best Book on Contemporary Art. A frequent lecturer both in the United States and abroad, he has taught painting, drawing, art history, and criticism at numerous colleges, universities, and art schools. He is the recipient of prestigious awards for his criticism and curatorial work from organizations such as the International Association of Art Critics and the Archives of American Art. In 2016 he was awarded a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Made Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture in 2000, he was subsequently promoted to Officier of the same order. Storr lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and New Haven, Connecticut.
08:11
Mike Kelley: Art, Influence & Legacy
Renowned art critic and curator Rob Storr delves into the life, work, and impact of Mike Kelley, one of the most provocative and influential artists of his time. In this insightful film, Storr unpacks Kelley’s unique approach to art, his exploration of memory, pop culture, and the subconscious, and his lasting legacy in contemporary art. Through expert analysis, Storr sheds light on Kelley’s complex practice—spanning sculpture, performance, video, and installation—revealing the depth and radical nature of his artistic vision.
15:47
Building Brasília
'To create an entirely new capital, from scratch, in the middle of nowhere, was an extraordinarily ambitious thing to try and do...' Prof. Richard J. Williams.
9:17
Pisa Pulpit: ‘Judge by the correct law!’
Jules Lubbock solves the puzzle of how to read Giovanni Pisano's Pisa Pulpit.
08:11
Renowned art critic and curator Rob Storr delves into the life, work, and impact of Mike Kelley, one of the most provocative and influential artists of his time. In this insightful film, Storr unpacks Kelley’s unique approach to art, his exploration of memory, pop culture, and the subconscious, and his lasting legacy in contemporary art. Through expert analysis, Storr sheds light on Kelley’s complex practice—spanning sculpture, performance, video, and installation—revealing the depth and radical nature of his artistic vision.
15:47
'To create an entirely new capital, from scratch, in the middle of nowhere, was an extraordinarily ambitious thing to try and do...' Prof. Richard J. Williams.
9:17
Jules Lubbock solves the puzzle of how to read Giovanni Pisano's Pisa Pulpit.
8:40
Cassius Ashcroft and Femi Themen — alumni of the articulation Prize — explore Richard Long’s site-specific sculpture ‘Tame Buzzard Line’.
7:56
Gregg Bordowitz explores the work of Glenn Ligon through the lens of his highly charged painting ‘Untitled (I Am A Man)’, 1988.
1:10
National Trust curator David Taylor remarks on a ‘portrait’ of a prosperous country estate near Manchester.