Organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the exhibit titled "This Will Have Been: Art, Love, and Politics in the 1980's," is an ambitious presentation that represents the diverse and complex art that was produced throughout the 1980's. The 80's were considered a transformative decade in the history of art, music, and politics beginning with new regimes of world power personified in the US by President Ronald Reagan, in the UK by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and in Germany by Chancellor Helmut Kohl. They ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the repudiation of the Reagan-Thatcher era signaled by the elections of Bill Clinton in the US and Tony Blair in the UK.
The exhibit re-examines the turbulent decade 30 years later, showing how the art world navigated the crisis' that the rest of the world faced and how this permanently changed the character of the art world forever. The presence of Reagan, along with the rise of postmodernism, people of color, women and gay activists, photography, AIDS/HIV and the fall of the Berlin fall were all factors that contributed to this large art movement pushing the art of the times to veer between radical and conservative, capricious and political, socially engaged and art historically aware.
The exhibit is divided into four sections 1) The End is Near 2) Democracy 3) Gender Trouble and 4) Desire and Longing.
I've made plans to go with friends to see the exhibit and hopefully they'll let me take some pictures, but you'll have to satisfy with some of these for the time being. I'm honestly really looking forward to what the exhibit will have in store for me - I'm a fan of the work of the ICA here in Boston, it's never disappointed. Check back for a follow up post on my visit experience and hopefully some of my own photos of the exhibit!
Cheers! The Aristochic
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