Since it busted onto the scene in 2004, the Bruce High Quality Foundation has been the truant darling of the art world. Made up of anonymous “Bruces” (a rotating roster of 5 to 8 artists, mostly Cooper Union graduates) the self-styled devil-may-care group is known for its irreverent work. Among its projects are a series of “Brucennials” and a now-defunct free arts school.

Installation view of Bruce High Quality Foundation’s Raft of the Medusa in “The End of Western Art,” 2019. Courtesy of ACA Galleries.

BHQF, as it is often abbreviated, traffics quite successfully in a trademark sense of destabilization: What is serious? What is a joke? What exactly is going on? The group is named in honor of a fictional artist, Bruce High Quality, who perished in the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001.  

Bruce High Quality Foundation, Landscape with Travelers Resting after Poussin. Courtesy of ACA Galleries.

In its first exhibition in three years, the group has staged “The End of Western Art” at ACA galleries. For the show, curators Mikaela Sardo Lamarche and Nemo Librizzi have selected works by Bruces that in some way draw from the history of Western art and juxtaposed them those works comparable originals (i.e. a Bruce interpretation of a Picasso, besides an actual Picasso).

Bruce High Quality Art Foundation, Christina, 2001-2013. Courtesy ACA Galleries.

In one work, Manet’s Olympia has been recast in fuchsia and offset with a neon frame that conjures illicit red-light district windows. In another work, titled Christina, a shadow box in the style of Joseph Cornell is positioned near an actual shadowbox by Joseph Cornell.

Bruce High Quality Foundation, Self Portrait (2012). Courtesy of ACA Galleries.

One might suppose that the works were made especially for the exhibition. But in actuality, the curators say they chose works from the Bruces’ studios, and that the historical pairings came afterward. Which brings to mind the title, “The End of Western Art,” and its wry and conclusive air. It could be read as either as a doom-and-gloom omen or a long awaited breath of fresh air, depending on whom you ask.

Bruce High Quality Foundation, Greek Vase (XL). Courtesy of ACA Galleries.

In some sense, the anonymity of BHQF could be read as a collective, anti-egoistic endeavor that harkens back to the ancient anonymity of the artist-artisan. Indeed, in a rather exuberant statement for the exhibition, Librizzi writes that for thousands of years “the artist of Egypt was a nameless voice from a single-minded collective,” adding that BQHF “fittingly stands as a beacon signaling the end of Western Art, receding again into the faceless recesses of mysterious authorship to comment upon and complete the timeline.”

(Left) Unknown, Egyptian Wood Mummy Sarcophagus (700–300 BC); (Right) Bruce High Quality Foundation, Pharaoh Head. Courtesy of ACA Galleries

At its core, the exhibition seems to ask how, in our own age, we should be looking at great art of the past. The answer for the Bruce High Quality Foundation is to be less precious about history, more playful, and, in Librizzi’s words, to “ridicule the pompous and sanctimonious, tearing down the time-honored treasures of the Academy, and conversely, cheering them on.”

“Bruce High Quality Foundation: The End of Western Art” is on view through June 14, 2019, at ACA Galleries at 529 West 20th Street, 5th Floor.