Event Horizon: Non-Traditional Paintings

About This Set

Utilizing the Event Horizon Study Set created by ECP's Abbie Anderson as the base, I've isolated a handful of works which would make for an interesting tour and dialogue around non-traditional expressions by artists -- in this case paintings, "paintings" and other painterly works created by non-traditional means and/or with unusual and unexpected materials.

Inasmuch as Abbie's study set did almost all of the "heavy lifting", this set is as much her creation as mine. Thanks Abbie!

Untitled from Edition Mat 64

Artist: Niki de Saint Phalle
Date: 1964
Medium: Mixed Media, Multiples, Other
Size: framed 28.375 x 21.3125 x 2.8125 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1966.16

Niki de Saint Phalle was part of a movement in Europe called Nouveau Réalisme (New Realism), which included Yves Klein and Piero Manzoni. Like the "Neo-Dadaists" in New York, the Nouveaux Réalistes favored the grittiness of everyday life over the elegant simplicity of 1950s abstraction (seen in the Walker's previous collections exhibition, The Shape of Time, in the works of Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman). In 1960 the Nouveaux Réalistes signed a manifesto calling for "new approaches to the perception of the real."

That same year, inspired by a child's dart game, de Saint Phalle invented a provocative technique for creating her paintings. She attached bags of colored pigment to the canvases and shot them with a .22 caliber rifle. The impact of the bullets released the paint, which splattered and ripped across the surface in unpredictable ways. She used this method to create numerous works during the 1960s, often before an audience of invited guests who were encouraged to take part in the shooting.

Wikipedia article on Niki de Saint Phalle

White Field

Artist: Günther Uecker
Date: 1964
Medium: Paintings
Size: unframed 34.5 x 34.5 x 2.75 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1964.41

Untitled

Artist: Raymond Hains
Date: 1959-1960/2002
Medium: Paintings
Size: overall installed 79.75 x 114.375 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 2005.33.1-.4

In 1949, Raymond Hains and his occasional collaborator Jacques Villeglé began excavating layers of torn advertising and political propaganda posters found on the streets of Paris, which they brought back to their studios and claimed as their art. Some 10 years later, Hains began collecting large, sheet-iron fence panels, visible here in Untitled, with posters
affixed to them. The artist often used a putty knife to further compose or manipulate the layers.

Hains’ works were made as if in collaboration with the countless people from a vast array of backgrounds who had pasted, touched, or torn at the posters on the street. Produced at the height of France’s postwar identity crisis—when the nation was divided about the best way to deal with a war of independence in its colony Algeria and was experiencing new waves of materialism and modernization—the posters within the work bear witness to this turmoil. In fact, a 1961 exhibition by Villeglé and Hains was titled simply La France déchirée (France in Shreds).

Peinture acrylique blanche sur tissu rayé blanc et orange (White acrylic painting on white and orange striped fabric)

Artist: Daniel Buren
Date: 1966
Medium: Paintings
Size: framed 90.875 x 79.375 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 2007.60

A visit to a Parisian market in 1965 marked a defining moment in Daniel Buren’s career. There, he came upon the materials that would henceforth define his practice: rolls of preprinted awning fabric with alternating white and colored stripes in green, red, yellow, blue, orange, brown, or black. At a standardized 8.7 centimeters, the equal distance between stripes meant that he was able to dispense with the traditional figure/ground distinctions in painting and make a flat and neutral work. As he asked in a 1969 manifesto, “. . . can one create something that is real, nonillusionistic, and therefore not an art object?”
For this work, Buren attached the fabric to a stretcher and painted the sides white*. He reasoned that without his visible mark-making, viewers would consider this a “readymade,” implying an unwanted connection to Dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp’s practice of turning everyday objects into art by placing them in the context of a gallery or museum.

* Zoom in to inspect the image's left or right border. Can you differentiate the painted edges from the preprinted fabric?

Contextual information for Daniel Buren's Peinture acrylique blanche sur tissu rayé blanc et orange (White acrylic painting on white and orange striped fabric):

Left: A photo of an awning made from the preprinted fabric with alternating white and colored stripes, as used extensively by Buren.

Right: Daniel Buren's installation for Art Unlimited at Art Basel, 2007.

Trophy II (for Teeny and Marcel Duchamp)

Artist: Robert Rauschenberg
Date: 1960
Medium: Paintings
Size: overall installed 90 x 118 x 5 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1970.1.1-.4

Any incentive to paint is as good as any other. There is no poor subject. Painting is always strongest when in spite of composition, color, etc., it appears as a fact, or an inevitability, as opposed to a souvenir or arrangement. Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in that gap between the two.) A pair of socks is no less suitable to make a painting with than wood, nails, turpentine, oil, and fabric. A canvas is never empty. --- Robert Rauschenberg, 1959

Robert Rauschenberg, Trophy II (for Teeny and Marcel Duchamp) (1960)

Any incentive to paint is as good as any other. There is no poor subject. Painting is always strongest when in spite of composition, color, etc., it appears as a fact, or an inevitability, as opposed to a souvenir or arrangement. Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made . . . A pair of socks is no less suitable to make a painting with than wood, nails, turpentine, oil, and fabric. --Robert Rauschenberg, 1959

In the early 1950s, Robert Rauschenberg devised a radical new form, blending two- dimensional collage techniques with three-dimensional objects on painted surfaces. Definable neither as sculpture nor painting, these works were dubbed "combines" by the artist to describe their interdisciplinary formal roots. Rauschenberg's combination of found imagery and gestural brushwork places these works between two movements in painting: Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art.

Trophy II (for Teeny and Marcel Duchamp) is one of a series of five combines, all called "trophies," which alluded to the unconventional creative spirit of artists whose work Rauschenberg greatly admired: in this case, Marcel Duchamp and his wife, Teeny. Using found objects, photographs, and paint, the artist considered himself "a collaborator with objects." In this way, he sought to avoid excessive autobiographical readings and instead refers to the dynamics of the urban landscape.

Walker solo exhibition: Robert Rauschenberg: Painting, 1965

Artist: Walker Art Center
Date: 1999
Medium: Commentary, object label
Institution: Walker Art Center

Homenagem a Fontana II (Homage to Fontana II)

Artist: Nelson Leirner
Date: 1967
Medium: Paintings
Size: framed 71.125 x 48.875 x 1.375 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 2007.76

Nelson Leirner was actively involved in a continuous project to challenge the way in which the art world grants critical and commercial value to objects. In São Paulo, Brazil, in 1967, he presented the exhibition Mass Production of Painting—Pictures at Cost Price, which featured a series of multiple paintings titled Homage to Fontana. The artist insisted that the works, composed of colored fabrics and zippers, be sold for no more than the cost of materials. At the same time, he alluded to the contemporaneous success of Italian artist Lucio Fontana, celebrated for his ruptured, sliced, and perforated canvases. Originally, Leirner invited the audience to use the zippers and thereby join him in the creation of multiple formal configurations, turning the romantic gesture of the solitary artist into a participatory and reversible one.

How Deep is the Ocean?

Artist: Udomsak Krisanamis
Date: 1998
Medium: Paintings
Size: unframed 72.0625 x 48 x 1.5 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1998.115

Udomsak Krisanamis is a Thai artist, now based in New York, who came to the United States in 1991 to pursue an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since then, he has gained a reputation as one of the most interesting abstract painters of note to have emerged in the past decade.

To make paintings like this one, Krisanamis pastes thousands of newspaper strips onto a fabric support and then obsessively inks them out, leaving only selected letter forms: every "O," for example, or the enclosed forms within the letters "P" and "B." What results is a densely layered, mottled, shimmering surface of dark and light suggestive of a night sky or a teeming city after dark. His work has been compared to Robert Rauschenberg's black paintings, Jackson Pollock's all-over compositions, and Robert Irwin's dot paintings, and it also recalls Jasper Johns' early encaustic canvases, which had surfaces similarly built up over newspaper strip collages. The technique grew out of Krisanamis' method of learning English: while reading the newspaper, he would cross out each word he knew, leaving the "blank spots" to be looked up.

Krisanamis' painting fits well within the context of the Walker's collection of postwar abstraction, which often has a personal or allusive content (including work of Vija Celmins, Lucio Fontana, Brice Marden, Kazuo Shiraga, and Yayoi Kusama). The acquisition also supports the museum's mission to collect the work of emerging artists and to purchase work made outside the boundaries of the United States and Europe.

How Deep is the Ocean? (detail)

The method Krisanamis employed for making his early paintings grew out of his way of learning English. While reading the newspaper, he would cross out each word he knew, leaving the "blank spots" to be looked up. As his English improved, the newspaper became more and more illegible.

This technique can be seen as a metaphor for the challenges faced by immigrants who do not speak the language of their adopted country. Learning a new language is an important factor in establishing identity in a new culture, but it also is only a part of a complex, long-term, and at times difficult process.

Analog

Artist: Mark Bradford
Date: 2004
Medium: Paintings
Size: overall 125.5 x 125.375 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 2006.24

The Whitney Biennial's Artist Directory (2006) provides a brief profile on Mark Bradford.

See video of Mark Bradford in conversation with Doryun Chong at the Walker Art Center on April 19, 2009. 1 hour 16 minutes

See a short video of Bradford creating as he explains his processes of collage and decollage. (Video produced by Art:21)

Ceaseless Boundless Endless Joy

Artist: Todd Norsten
Date: 2008
Medium: Paintings
Size: overall 78 x 66 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 2008.7

The Whitney Biennial's Artist Directory (2006) provides a brief profile on Todd Norsten.

Prayer

Artist: Siah Armajani
Date: 1962
Medium: Paintings
Size: framed 70.75 x 50.75 x 1.375 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1962.53

Prayer (detail)

Left: In this detail of Armajani's Prayer, Farsi calligraphy inscribes the words of 13th and 14th century poets.

Right: In this image, traditional Farsi script ornaments the walls of an Iranian mosque.

Aeid

Artist: Tomma Abts
Date: 2006
Medium: Sculpture, Sculptures
Size: overall 18.875 x 14.9375 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 2008.31

Learn more about the artist Tomma Abts, winner of the 2006 Turner Prize, on this Web resource provided by the Tate Britain.

Abts is known for her small-scale paintings, but Aeid is unusual in that it is a sculpture cast from one of her paintings.

The Walker collection includes many, many additional works that fit wonderfully with this topic, but are not on display in Event Horizon. These additional works could be used for classroom study, or images of the works could be used in the gallery to expand on concepts or compare and contrast works that are on display.

Yoko Ono
Lucio Fontana
Sol LeWitt
Kazuo Shiraga
Hermann Nitsch
Yves Klein
Yayoi Kusama
Ellsworth Kelly
Chuck Close
Chris Ofili
Glenn Ligon
Andy Warhol
Sigmar Polke
Anselm Kiefer

Painting to Hammer a Nail in

Artist: Yoko Ono
Date: 1961/1967
Medium: Sculpture, Sculptures
Size: overall 12 x 8 x 4 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 2002.206

Yoko Ono, Painting to Hammer a Nail In (track 1)

Click here to get the Flash Player.

Artist: Art on Call
Date: November 19, 2009
Medium: Commentary, Artist Comments
Institution: Walker Art Center

Yoko Ono, Painting to Hammer a Nail In (track 2)

Click here to get the Flash Player.

Artist: Art on Call
Date: November 19, 2009
Medium: Commentary, Artist Comments
Institution: Walker Art Center

Concetto Spaziale - Attesa (Spatial Concept - Expectation)

Artist: Lucio Fontana
Date: 1964-1965
Medium: Paintings
Size: unframed 57.5 x 45 x inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1998.113

Concetto Spaziale (Spatial Concept)

Artist: Lucio Fontana
Date: 1968
Medium: Paintings
Size: framed 39.375 x 32.875 x 2 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1998.114

artist's quote

We are living in the mechanical age. Painted canvas and standing plaster figures no longer have any reason to exist. What is needed is a change in both essence and form. What is needed is the supercession of painting, sculpture, poetry, and music. It is necessary to have an art that is in greater harmony with the needs of the new spirit. Lucio Fontana, 1946

Artist: Lucio Fontana
Date: 1946
Medium: Artist Statement, artist's quote
Institution: Walker Art Center

Untitled

Artist: Kazuo Shiraga
Date: 1959
Medium: Paintings
Size: unframed 70.875 x 110 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1998.109

Kazuo Shiraga, Untitled (1959)

Kazuo Shiraga is a member of the avant-garde movement in Japan known as the Gutai Art Association. Established in the summer of 1954, the group sought to create a new art "never known until now." Gutai, which means "embodiment," has similarities to the Action Painting of New York in the 1950s, but is uniquely influenced by its own time and place--postwar Japan. Coming out of that country's surrender in World War II, Gutai practitioners desired an art free of social criticism or political implication. Their artistic process combined action and performance with painting. Unlike Happenings in Europe and America, Gutai events were meant to result in the creation of sculptures and paintings.

During the first Gutai exhibition in 1955, Shiraga dove into a pile of mud and wrestled, kicked, and thrashed the clay mound to create an artwork sculpted by physical action. In this painting, Shiraga used his body as a tool--this time a large paint brush. Swinging from a hanging rope, he used his bare feet to apply paint onto a canvas on the floor. The finished work depicts his random spins, swirls, and slips.

Artist: Walker Art Center
Date: 2002
Medium: Commentary, curriculum resource
Institution: Walker Art Center

Kazuo Shiraga, Untitled (1959)

With this recently acquired painting, the Walker adds to its collection a work representative of an important avant-garde art movement that is not very well known in the United States: the Gutai Art Association. Gutai, which means "embodiment," has similarities to the Action Painting of New York in the 1950s, but is uniquely influenced by its own time and place--postwar Japan.

Established in the summer of 1954, the group formed around artist Jiro Yoshihara in Osaka and sought to create a new art "never known until now." Coming out of Japan's surrender in World War II, Gutai artists desired an art free of social criticism or political implication. Their first exhibition was in 1955 and featured a performance wherein Shiraga dove into a pile of mud and wrestled, kicked, and thrashed the clay mound to create an artwork sculpted by physical action.

Unlike Allan Kaprow's Happenings in Europe and America--which weren't to emerge for another two years--Gutai artists intended their performances to result in the creation of sculptures and more prominently, paintings. Shozo Shimamoto threw bottles of paint onto paper spread on the floor. Saburo Murakami thrust his body through packing paper stretched over frames, and painted by throwing paint-covered balls at the canvas. In this untitled painting, Shiraga used his bare feet to apply the paint onto a piece of canvas on the floor. Grasping a hanging rope, he dipped and swung himself through the thick, wet oil paint. The finished painting depicts his random spins, swirls, and slips.

Artist: Walker Art Center
Date: 1999
Medium: Commentary, object label
Institution: Walker Art Center

Shiraga Kazuo, Untitled (track 1)

Click here to get the Flash Player.

Artist: Art on Call
Date: November 19, 2009
Medium: Commentary, Curator Comments
Institution: Walker Art Center

Philippe Vergne discusses Kazuo Shiraga's Untitled (1959)

When Kazuo Shiraga started to work post-war, too in the 1950s, with the Gutai Group in Japan, in the same way then, the Viennese artists from the Aktionist Movement were considered as one of the first modern movements in Vienna, we can think that Gutai could be considered as the first modern movement in the history of twentieth century art in Japan. It was a group of people in the same way they were willing to challenge painting through action. As you can see in this painting by Kazuo Shiraga, it's something which is related to action. The painting is a trace, is a record, of something which was done live. In the same way that Otto Muehl is no more about representation, it's about a dynamic movement, just to inform you about the way the painting was made, Shiraga was painting with his feet, which can seem funny but it was a statement to show how the painting could ...testify of something which was linked to the body of the artist, which is important in this painting, in this movement in that we are dealing with a group of artists who are offering from a total other part of the world something which was challenging a modern model. It's important for us also to have this painting in the institution, because it's not Pollock but it's something which is challenging Pollock, which is offering an option to Pollock. It's linked to performing art among all the activities that the Gutai Group was doing: performing art, theater, music. People like composer Takehisa Kosugi ... all these people were working together. When we know the history of the Walker with performing art ... we know, for example, that Kosugi is now the official composer for Merce Cunningham. You have an history which is coming together through these different names. I think it's also an important piece for the Walker because the Walker will do, in a few months, a Gutai retrospective and, also, because if we start to look at Gutai, you cannot take away what was the historical situation, what was also literature in Japan, and I think when you look at this kind of painting you cannot not think about someone like Mishima. And when you look at Muehl, for me, it's the same thing, you can think about the same political protest.

Artist: Philippe Vergne
Date: September 1999
Medium: Commentary, curatorial commentary
Institution: Walker Art Center

<div class="gallery_item_text" style="width:135px; height:115px;" >When Kazuo Shiraga started to work post-war, too in the 1950s, with the Gutai Group in Japan, in the same way then, the Viennese artists from the Aktionist Movement were considered as one of the first modern movements in Vienna, we can think that Gutai could be considered as the first modern movement in the history of twentieth century art in Japan. It was a group of people in the same way they were willing to challenge painting through action. As you can see in this painting by Kazuo Shiraga, it's something which is related to action. The painting is a trace, is a record, of something which was done live. In the same way that Otto Muehl is no more about representation, it's about a dynamic movement, just to inform you about the way the painting was made, Shiraga was painting with his feet, which can seem funny but it was a statement to show how the painting could ...testify of something which was linked to the body of the artist, which is important in this painting, in this movement in that we are dealing with a group of artists who are offering from a total other part of the world something which was challenging a modern model. It's important for us also to have this painting in the institution, because it's not Pollock but it's something which is challenging Pollock, which is offering an option to Pollock. It's linked to performing art among all the activities that the Gutai Group was doing: performing art, theater, music. People like composer Takehisa Kosugi ... all these people were working together. When we know the history of the Walker with performing art ... we know, for example, that Kosugi is now the official composer for Merce Cunningham. You have an history which is coming together through these different names. I think it's also an important piece for the Walker because the Walker will do, in a few months, a Gutai retrospective and, also, because if we start to look at Gutai, you cannot take away what was the historical situation, what was also literature in Japan, and I think when you look at this kind of painting you cannot not think about someone like Mishima. And when you look at Muehl, for me, it's the same thing, you can think about the same political protest.</div>

Joan Rothfuss discusses Lucio Fontana's , Concetto Spaziale--Attesa (Spatial Concept--Expectation) (1964-1965)

I'm going to start by talking about Lucio Fontana. The painting, Concetto Spaziale, that we start out the exhibition with is representative, I think, of an incredibly radical shift in the way that artists approach painting. Since the beginning of the century, artists have been trying to find a way to make paintings that did not deal with space as illusion. The whole history of painting since the beginning of history, when people started marking on things and making paintings, usually involved architecture. The paintings were attached to walls of buildings. They were drawings within churches or private homes. It wasn't until the Renaissance, when oil paint was invented, that artists started to make paintings as objects. To be able to move the paintings from one wall to another within an architectural space was a new thing. At the time that they did this, they began to think about paintings as windows and talked about paintings as windows out into another kind of reality. So, since the middle of the fourteenth century really, artists had been dealing with painting in essentially the same way, which was as a way of looking outside of the reality that they were standing in.

What Fontana did and a lot of artists did as well elsewhere, in the United States and Japan and in other parts of Europe, was to try to find a way to challenge that, to allow people to understand that the painting was actually a wall. It was not a window. It was something that you were faced with and that didn't allow you to look out. Artists like Picasso and the surrealists had started to break that down by changing the kind of reality that you were seeing through the so-called window. But, Fontana really did the radical thing, which was to call your attention to the surface and say, "This is actually a flat plane and that's what you're looking at. You're not looking at anything that's an illusion." By slashing it, which was kind of a violent act to perform on the painting, he was trying to bring in the space behind the painting. He was trying to allow that space to become part of the space of the painting. So, in other words, there was no illusion anymore. It's almost like painting as sculpture, painting as an object. It's a very simple gesture that he's made, but I think a very provocative one. It certainly has a lot to do with the time that he started making these, which was immediately post-war in Italy, which had been involved, of course, heavily in all of the destruction and fighting. Artists in Europe and in Japan and the United States were trying to find ways to make paintings responsibly in the wake of this incredible disaster. The ones that were made by Fontana working in Italy and Shiraga working in Japan were more violent than those that were made, let's say, in the United States and, perhaps, there's some contextual reason for that. Fontana's painting as sculpture and painting as gesture, which is what he talked about in terms of the performative aspect, was something very new and something that had a lot of implications for the artists that came after him working for the next few generations here and in Europe.

I think Fontana's influence was recognized immediately. It was very early. Fontana started doing these in the late 1940s and this was before Pollock even started doing drip paintings here. It was certainly well before Manzoni and Kline and others started working radically to change the kind of pictures that had been make. So, I think he had a lot of influence on those artists that immediately followed him and his thoughts were incorporated pretty quickly into what was going on in Europe in avant-garde painting.

Artist: Joan Rothfuss
Date: September 1999
Medium: Commentary, curatorial commentary
Institution: Walker Art Center

<div class="gallery_item_text" style="width:135px; height:115px;" >I'm going to start by talking about Lucio Fontana. The painting, Concetto Spaziale, that we start out the exhibition with is representative, I think, of an incredibly radical shift in the way that artists approach painting. Since the beginning of the century, artists have been trying to find a way to make paintings that did not deal with space as illusion. The whole history of painting since the beginning of history, when people started marking on things and making paintings, usually involved architecture. The paintings were attached to walls of buildings. They were drawings within churches or private homes. It wasn't until the Renaissance, when oil paint was invented, that artists started to make paintings as objects. To be able to move the paintings from one wall to another within an architectural space was a new thing. At the time that they did this, they began to think about paintings as windows and talked about paintings as windows out into another kind of reality. So, since the middle of the fourteenth century really, artists had been dealing with painting in essentially the same way, which was as a way of looking outside of the reality that they were standing in. What Fontana did and a lot of artists did as well elsewhere, in the United States and Japan and in other parts of Europe, was to try to find a way to challenge that, to allow people to understand that the painting was actually a wall. It was not a window. It was something that you were faced with and that didn't allow you to look out. Artists like Picasso and the surrealists had started to break that down by changing the kind of reality that you were seeing through the so-called window. But, Fontana really did the radical thing, which was to call your attention to the surface and say, "This is actually a flat plane and that's what you're looking at. You're not looking at anything that's an illusion." By slashing it, which was kind of a violent act to perform on the painting, he was trying to bring in the space behind the painting. He was trying to allow that space to become part of the space of the painting. So, in other words, there was no illusion anymore. It's almost like painting as sculpture, painting as an object. It's a very simple gesture that he's made, but I think a very provocative one. It certainly has a lot to do with the time that he started making these, which was immediately post-war in Italy, which had been involved, of course, heavily in all of the destruction and fighting. Artists in Europe and in Japan and the United States were trying to find ways to make paintings responsibly in the wake of this incredible disaster. The ones that were made by Fontana working in Italy and Shiraga working in Japan were more violent than those that were made, let's say, in the United States and, perhaps, there's some contextual reason for that. Fontana's painting as sculpture and painting as gesture, which is what he talked about in terms of the performative aspect, was something very new and something that had a lot of implications for the artists that came after him working for the next few generations here and in Europe. I think Fontana's influence was recognized immediately. It was very early. Fontana started doing these in the late 1940s and this was before Pollock even started doing drip paintings here. It was certainly well before Manzoni and Kline and others started working radically to change the kind of pictures that had been make. So, I think he had a lot of influence on those artists that immediately followed him and his thoughts were incorporated pretty quickly into what was going on in Europe in avant-garde painting. </div>

Schüttbild (Poured Picture)

Artist: Hermann Nitsch
Date: 1963
Medium: Paintings
Size: overall 72.5 x 112.5 x 1 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 2002.4

Hermann Nitsch, Schüttbild (Poured Picture) (track 1)

Click here to get the Flash Player.

Artist: Art on Call
Date: November 19, 2009
Medium: Commentary, Curator Comments
Institution: Walker Art Center

Suaire de Mondo Cane (Mondo Cane Shroud)

Artist: Yves Klein
Date: 1961
Medium: Paintings
Size: overall 108 x 118.5 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 2004.63.1-.3

Shoestring Potatoes Spilling from a Bag

Artist: Claes Oldenburg
Date: 1966
Medium: Sculpture, Sculptures
Size: variable 108 x 46 x 42 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1966.46

Oven-Pan

Artist: Yayoi Kusama
Date: 1963
Medium: Sculpture, Sculptures
Size: overall 9.75 x 18.5 x 24 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1996.165

Accumulation of Spaces (No. B.T.)

Artist: Yayoi Kusama
Date: 1963
Medium: Drawings and Watercolors, Unique Works on Paper, Mixed media
Size: sheet 19.75 x 25.5 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1996.169

Four Geometric Figures in a Room

Artist: Sol LeWitt
Date: 1984
Medium: Paintings
Size: overall 101.5 x 1107.5 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1984.8.1-.4

Red Yellow Blue III

Artist: Ellsworth Kelly
Date: 1966
Medium: Paintings
Size: each unframed 70.5 x 70.125 x 1.375 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1998.13.1-.3

Big Self-Portrait

Artist: Chuck Close
Date: 1967-1968
Medium: Paintings
Size: unframed 107.5 x 83.5 x 2 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1969.16

Kiki

Artist: Chuck Close
Date: 1993
Medium: Paintings
Size: unframed 100 x 84.125 x 3.375 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1994.7

Third Eye Vision

Artist: Chris Ofili
Date: 1999
Medium: Paintings
Size: overall 96 x 72.375 x 6 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 2000.11.1-.3

Diamond Dust Joseph Beuys

Artist: Andy Warhol
Date: 1980
Medium: Paintings
Size: unframed 100 x 80 x 1.5625 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1993.185

Andy Warhol, Diamond Dust Joseph Beuys (1980)

When I die I don't want to leave any leftovers. I'd like to disappear. People wouldn't say he died today, they'd say he disappeared. But I do like the idea of people turning into dust or sand, and it would be very glamorous to be reincarnated as a big ring on Elizabeth Taylor's finger.--Andy Warhol, 1975

Though German artist Joseph Beuys' (1921-1986) art is formally and thematically quite different from Andy Warhol's, the two artists are frequently linked by critics who perceive them as possessing an almost alchemical ability to transform ordinary objects into valuable artworks. Both artists made work about the other. They never were close friends, but displayed an elaborate and wily respect for each other. Their first official meeting was in Düsseldorf in 1979; Warhol recorded the event in a snapshot of Beuys' face that would soon materialize in a number of striking portraits, including this negative image flecked with glittery "diamond" dust. Warhol's images of Beuys are among his many portraits of historical figures and celebrities, including Vladimir Lenin, Chairman Mao, Ludwig van Beethoven, Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy, Grace Kelly, Elvis Presley, and Queen Elizabeth II.

Walker solo exhibition: Andy Warhol Drawings, 1942-1987, 1999

Artist: Walker Art Center
Date: 1999
Medium: Commentary, object label
Institution: Walker Art Center

Frau Herbst und ihre zwei Töchter (Mrs. Autumn and Her Two Daughters)

Artist: Sigmar Polke
Date: 1991
Medium: Paintings
Size: unframed 118 x 196.75 x 1.625 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1991.70

Emanation

Artist: Anselm Kiefer
Date: 1984-1986
Medium: Paintings
Size: unframed 161.5 x 110.75 x 9.25 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1990.22