Opinion
Why Not Wear a Sculpture?
THE DAILY PIC: The 40th birthday of MoMA PS1 celebrates Judith Shea and other rule-breakers.
by
Blake Gopnik
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THE DAILY PIC (#1591): “FORTY”, at PS1 contemporary art center, is one of the sleeper shows of an amazing summer season in New York. (How much more could one city ask for?: Stuart Davis and Danny Lyon at the Whitney, Moholy-Nagy at the Guggenheim, Degas, Dada and Goldin at MoMA – all soon to be Daily Pics.)
The PS1 show, celebrating the institution’s 40th birthday, takes us back to a time when “alternative art centers” really felt … alternative. Some of the figures in it – Carl Andre, Robert Ryman, Sol LeWitt – have now moved firmly from the margins to the (lucrative) center. But works by others, such as Judith Shea, the maker of today’s Pic, still feel like they live on the edge.
Shea was trained as both an artist and a fashion designer, and even after 40 years her PS1 pieces feel smart and challenging. They manage a brilliant crossover between rigorous Modernism (all that Sol LeWitt gridding) and thoughtful clothes (shades of Rei Kawakubo’s more minimal, sculptural pieces.) And as Shea herself has pointed out, the very fact of presenting clothes as sculpture – but also wearing them – once had, and still has, feminist implications. (Photos by Lucy Hogg)
For a full survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.
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