High & Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture

by Kirk Varnedoe, Adam Gopnik

Excerpt from the "High and Modern Art and Popular Culture" continues a tradition that has been important to The Museum of Modern Art throughout its thematic exhibitions that examine the fundamental premises of modern art, and link the innovations of its pioneers to the explorations of younger, contemporary artists. This kind of exhibition is particularly demanding, and the present project, so ambitious and heterogeneous in its scope, was only made possible by the dedication of an extraordinary number of individuals and institutions. Excerpt from the Our goal is to examine the transformations through which modern painters and sculptors have made new poetic languages by reimagining the possibilities in forms of popular culture; and, as a corollary, to acknowledge the way those adaptations in modern art have found their way back into the common currency of public visual prose. To demonstrate that process, we will focus on aspects of style, including small items like sans-serif typefaces or Benday dots, and broader strategies such as gigantism or the mind-arresting transformation of objects.

Genres: Art, Comics

464 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1990

About the author

John Kirk Train Varnedoe was an American art historian, the Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art from 1988 to 2001, Professor of the History of Art at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and Professor of Fine Arts at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts.

Reviews

[Lor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favorite excerpt:
Less manichean and less deterministic, more pragmatic and more nuanced in its approaches than are those encompassing social theories offered recently by most French writers and their American cohorts, it would presumably agree with those who argue that there is a degree of emancipation to be found in consumption in general, that consumption satisfies needs, and that, even though those needs can be distorted to an amazing degree, every need contains a smaller or larger kernel of authenticity. (p.208)