SAM

Modern in America
Collection Insight
Jul 8, 2004–Jan 2, 2006
SAM Fourth Floor Galleries

Modern in America, an installation drawn from SAM's permanent collection, looks at how photography and painting have interacted in American art from the 1920s to the present day.

Beginning with works by originators of American modern art—Georgia O’Keeffe, Marsden Hartley and Paul Strand, among others—the installation shows how different early modern artists looked at the same world with brush or photograph in the 1920s and 1930s.

In the 1940s and 1950s artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and William de Kooning used the distinct properties of oil paint to define a style of painting that withdrew entirely from the premises of photographic representation. Their handmade paintings, lusciously dripped, scumbled, poured and spilled, were the antithesis of anything the machine could do. When Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol introduced the real world into their paintings it was by incorporating everyday objects and silkscreened objects.

For artists active today, photography is no longer used solely to make an image that is true, and painting and photography are interchangeable mediums.
----------------(Above from Seattle Art Museum Page)----------------

I don't know if anyone would be interested in making a trek up to Seattle to see this, but seems like a really nice exhibition. I was thinking maybe the 3rd weekend of May head up for a day trip. I've only been to SAM once, but I had a really good time.

I went last year to see the Spain in the Age of Exploration exhibit and it was amazing! They had an audio guide in english and spanish- I chose spanish first and it was really interesting! My boyfriend is currently in Spain and I've had him sending me pictures of all the art and architecture, it's absolutely gorgeous! :)