The Undiscovered Country - Hammer Museum 2004

Featuring 60 paintings by 23 artists, The Undiscovered Country at the Hammer Museum demonstrates the vitality of representational painting during the past four decades and provides a rare opportunity to see paintings by younger contemporary artists in the context of influential works by established 20th-century masters.
Painting has been declared dead or irrelevant many times since photography usurped its most fundamental function-to depict and represent the world we live in. The Undiscovered Country brings together works spanning a forty-year period that illustrate how rich the possibilities of painterly representation still are, and trace the influence earlier artists continue to exert on today’s generation. The exhibition title is a reference to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, who uses the phrase “the undiscovered country” to describe the afterlife “from whose bourn no traveler returns.” In this sense, the artists in the exhibition can be seen as navigating the uncharted territory following the so-called death of painting. Yet on a broader level, each blank canvas is its own undiscovered country for the painter who stands before it.
Featuring: Mamma Andersson, John Baldessari, Edgar Bryan, Vija Celmins, Peter Doig, Lukas Duwenhogger, Mari Eastman, Thomas Eggerer, Kirsten Everberg, Philip Guston, Richard Hamilton, Neil Jenney, Jochen Klein, Thomas Lawson, Kerry James Marshall, Lucy McKenzie, Silke Otto-Knapp, Laura Owens, Enoc Perez, Fairfield Porter, Richard Prince, Gerhard Richter, and Luc Tuymans.

138p - EN - 22.3x26.5cm - hardcover - great condition