The Pictures Generation

The name is connected with the exhibition «Pictures», organized by Douglas Crimp in 1977 at Artists Space. The exhibition included Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo and Philip Smith, but later Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, Laurie Simmons, Louise Lawler, Barbara Kruger and other artists also came to be associated with The Pictures Generation.

The main feature of The Pictures Generation was its work with already existing visual codes. The artists did not try to create an «original» image; instead, they used appropriation, rephotography, staging, montage, quotation and imitation in order to show that the modern perception of reality is formed through media. They were interested in how media images shape desire, identity and ideas of the norm.

One of the most famous examples is Cindy Sherman’s series «Untitled Film Stills» (1977–1980). In these black-and-white photographs, the artist depicts fictional female characters who resemble heroines from old films. However, these are not stills from real films, but artificially constructed scenes. Sherman shows that female identity in mass culture is often built as a set of recognizable poses, gazes and narrative clichés.

Another important example is Sherrie Levine’s series «After Walker Evans» (1981). Levine rephotographed well-known photographs by Walker Evans from a printed catalogue and presented them as her own works. This gesture questions authorship, authenticity and the status of the «original». Levine’s work is especially important as a critique of the modernist cult of the unique artwork and the male artistic canon.

Richard Prince, especially in his «Cowboys» series, analysed the myths of American mass culture. By rephotographing Marlboro advertisements, he showed that the image of the free and masculine cowboy was not reality, but a commercial construction.

Barbara Kruger, who is closely connected with this circle of artists, combined found magazine images with short aggressive texts, for example in «Untitled (You Are Not Yourself)» (1982). Her works reveal the connection between language, power, consumption and the formation of the subject.

Among other artists associated with The Pictures Generation are Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Philip Smith, Louise Lawler, Laurie Simmons and Sarah Charlesworth. Their practices expand the understanding of this phenomenon: Jack Goldstein, in the film «Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer» (1975), used a ready-made symbol of the film industry — the MGM intro with the roaring lion; Louise Lawler, in the photograph «Pollock and Tureen, Arranged by Mr. and Mrs. Burton Tremaine, Connecticut» (1984), showed how a private interior changes the perception of an artwork; Laurie Simmons, in «Walking House» (1989), turned to artificial models of home, femininity and everyday life; Sarah Charlesworth, in her series «Modern History» (1977–1979), analysed newspaper images and the visual structure of news. These examples show that The Pictures Generation dealt not only with advertising and photography, but also with broader systems of image production: cinema, the press, the museum, the interior and social roles.

The theoretical basis for understanding The Pictures Generation is provided by texts by Douglas Crimp, Roland Barthes, Craig Owens, Rosalind Krauss and Jean Baudrillard. In the essay «Pictures», Crimp described a new artistic situation in which the artist works not with direct experience, but with already existing cultural images. Barthes, in «The Death of the Author», questioned the idea of the author as the only source of meaning. Baudrillard wrote about simulacra and a world in which signs begin to replace reality. Krauss criticized the myth of the originality of the avant-garde, while Owens connected postmodern art with allegory, quotation and the reuse of signs.

The Pictures Generation worked precisely in the space between image, copy and interpretation. For these artists, a photograph, an advertisement or a film still was no longer a transparent reflection of reality. They were perceived as ready-made cultural constructions in which other people’s scenarios of behaviour, desire and identity were already embedded. Therefore, the appropriation of another image by Sherman, Levine, Prince, Kruger or Longo was not a simple quotation, and certainly not plagiarism. It was a way to show that any image is already connected with media, the market, art and power.

The formation of The Pictures Generation was influenced by Pop Art, Conceptual Art, Minimalism, feminist criticism, poststructuralism and the development of mass media. Pop Art had already turned to advertising and consumer culture, but the artists of The Pictures Generation took the next step: they considered the media image not simply as a subject, but as a mechanism that shapes perception. In turn, The Pictures Generation influenced appropriation art, postmodern photography, feminist art, institutional critique and later digital remix culture, where copying, quoting and reworking images became everyday practices.

The Pictures Generation can be defined as an artistic phenomenon that studies the life of images in a media-saturated culture. It showed that in contemporary culture an image is rarely neutral. An advertising photograph, a film still, a museum photograph or a magazine illustration already gives the viewer a certain way of looking at and understanding what is seen. Therefore, the artists of this circle did not so much create new images as analyse ready-made ones — showing where they came from, how they work and why they seem natural.