The Indiscipline of Painting: International abstraction from the 1960s to now
Major works by artists including Andy Warhol, Frank Stella and Bridget Riley are to go on show alongside paintings by emerging talents in a celebration of the complex genre of abstraction from the 1960s to now.
The Indiscipline of Painting is an international group exhibition including works by fourty-nine artists from the 1960s to now. Selected by British painter Daniel Sturgis, the exhibition considers how abstraction has remained a site of urgent, relevant and critical enquiry for generations of artists over the last 50 years. The exhibition goes on to demonstrate the ways in which the history and legacy of abstract painting continues to inspire artists working today.
The contemporary position of abstract painting is problematic. It can be seen to be synonymous with a moment in modernism that has long since passed, and an ideology which led the medium to stagnate in self-analysis and ideas of historical progression. The Indiscipline of Painting challenges such assumptions. It reveals how painting’s modernist histories, languages and positions have continued to provoke ongoing dialogues with contemporary practitioners, even as painting’s decline and death has been routinely and erroneously declared.
The show brings together works by British, American and European artists made over the last five decades and features major new commissions and loans. It includes important works by Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Michael Craig-Martin and Bridget Riley alongside younger artists such as Tomma Abts, Tauba Auerbach, Jacob Kassay and Cheyney Thompson.
To mark the exhibition the Mead Gallery is recreating artist Gene Davis’ 1972 work Franklin’s Footpath. Originally situated in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, it was at the time the world’s largest painting. In its latest incarnation it will stretch over 400metres² from the main campus road to the Warwick Arts Centre entrance, and will be installed for the duration of the exhibition. The exhibition will also feature a new commission by Swiss artist Francis Baudevin.
The Indiscipline of Painting is a collaborative project between Mead Gallery and Tate St Ives, where it opened 8th October 2011. Mead Gallery and Tate St Ives gratefully acknowledge the support of Arts Council England, The Henry Moore Foundation, The Higher Education Funding Council, and the Swiss Cultural Fund in Britain.
