Take an Object
MoMA
11 West 53 Street, New York, NY 10019, Second Floor
August 22, 2015 – February 28, 2016
MoMA is exploring old times to bring a new exhibition, Take an Object, to its space from August 22nd to February 28th, 2016. The exhibit explores an era in the 1950s and 60s, where a radical shift in the practices of many artists influenced and inspired them to work with unprecedented materials such as flower pots, bicycle seats, and car parts.
The exhibition’s name stems from a sketchbook owned by Jasper Johns in 1964. In the sketchbook, Johns wrote, “Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.” Those particular phrases inspired dozens of artists, historians, and critics to exercise these instructions into their daily practices and inspired the revolutionary approaches to art making.
Take an Object features a collection of works from artists including Niki de Saint Phalle and Robert Rauschenberg, dating from the mid-50s to the 1970s, which reflects the shared interests and beliefs of the artists from that revolutionary era. The works deploy ordinary, everyday objects, such as lightbulbs, newspapers, chairs, and taxidermic animals.These objects look beyond the use of ordinary mediums like oil paints and utilize everyday life and it’s materials as a way to create and influence art.
