434 the historian of art which begins to be replaced by that of the critic. What is at stake is the emergence of a type of society, close to the parameters of what came to be called the american way of life. In this context the focuse of art moved to other spaces of a world that in its complexity had defined its political horizons and would soon interpret their lifestyles. The appearence of Pop Art would express better than any other form these changes and legitimations. Around the Leo Castelli Gallery will grow a generation that will admirably interpret the change of the era. In 1967 Ten from Leo Castelli will bring together all from Jaspers Johns to Frank Stella, Donald Judd, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Morris, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist. These are vital years that will determine a draft in the art forms and its institutional role. The art circuit, artists, galleries, collectors, museums will grow rapidly from that moment on and it will be art itself with its ideas and languages who define a new currancy. In the limit of this ideas works can be read sucha as Shades of 1964 by Robert Rauschenberg or Black and White Numerals from 1968 by Jasper Johns. 9 Throughout the 70s and 80s Pop Art invades the spaces of everyday life, transforming the meaning of its objects, giving them the nearby sensation of a happy world. They are the years of mass culture, which finds a privileged ally in the mass media. Media and market initiate the process of homologation of the planet into a kind of cultural mirage. At the same time a booming cultural industry puts in scene the new cultural products that define the skyline of the curiosity of the new viewer. Jean Baudrillard spoke of the ‘Beaubourg effect’ referring us to the new rituals that defined the aesthetic behaviors for the new user, in the same line as Guy Débord, in La Société du spectacle, he had identified the strategies of the new fetish. From these keys can be made the reading of fundamental works of the Collection of the IVAM relative to this moment sucha as Blue spark, of James Rosenquist, 1962, Rear window, of Richard Lindner, 1971, Bottle of notes, 1989, of Claes Oldenburg, or A Fable Concerning Power, 1991, of John Baldessari, which in a privileged way represent the American taste. On a more European side we have the works of Öyvind Fahlström as Red Seesaw or ESSO-LSD from the late 60s or Valerio Adami’s new figuration. In the case of Spain the tradition of Pop art has had a very relevant incident, always associated to irony and political criticism. The importance of the work of Equipo Crónica widely present in the collection of the IVAM, Equipo Realidad, Eduardo Arroyo, Juan Genovés or Luis Gordillo, son magníficos ejemplos de estos postulados. 10 In the 1970s and the years following, appear other ways to a reflection on the art work and opposite to the trivialization served by the entertainment society, which had come to tame art in a false set of estetizaciones and mirages. They were the heirs of those who had been associated with the art of an utopian tension such as the historic Avant-gardes had postulated. Personalities such as Joseph Beuys and Yves Klein had started from different premises of rethinking the artwork. From these references we can approach some works of this room, which together account for the return to the truth of art and its critical sense in contemporary culture. Thus we can see the work of Richard Serra, which in its structure and entropy is stated as an absolute object. Or 9 Objekte of Gerhard Richter as well as variations of Dieter Roth, attentive to show the material composition of its elements. As also the view-object of Gordon Matta-Clark, reducing the language to the sign that defines the space. As well as the Studies for holograms of Bruce Nauman, attentive to show gestures into their more primal expression. Or the Pierced Spiral of Robert Smithson which in cardboard and wood, restores the metaphor of the labyrinth so typical of contemporary civilization. Finally the photographs by Bernd and Hilla Becher which in thier series covers like an industrial continuum a world called to be ruined. 11 By the end of the nineteen nineties, a debate about the existence of an ethical shift in culture emerged. Events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall or the dissolution of the Soviet Union precipitated the time of the history. At the same time the process of globalisation of the planet was already an irreversible fact and the world maps demanded new cartographers. This new situation of the art system was open to new problems registering them in its agenda. Since then we can say that it is difficult to build its history without reference to the work of art. Issues such as identity, in all its declinations, memory and its archives, cultural homologation or the multiple forms of resistance, are today key arguments that contemporary art interprets and elucidates. The IVAM Collection has been sensitive to this overview of issues found and represented in the exhibition of the 25th Anniversary. Here can be seen Robert Rauschenberg with Blood Orange Summer Glut, of 1987, along with Lichtung by Tony Cragg of 1991. You can find Sean Scully´s Western Eyes, alongside of works by Cristina Iglesias, Juan Muñoz and Cabrita Reis; the duel of Christian Boltanski, La Réserve des Suisses Morts, alongside works of Bernardí Roig, Zoran Music, Carmen Calvo, Darío Villalba or John Davis, which mark the silence of those limits illuminated by memory or pain. Or the references of other works, full of questions and anxiety in a sort of dram-play of an experience in conflict, present here with works by Georg Baselitz, Markus Lüpertz, Albert Oehlen and Magdalena Abakanowicz. Also the presence of photographers ranging from Gabriele Basilico to José M. Ballester which already are the registry of a cosmopolitan world and the search of new ways of inhabiting. From the other end, the look of Joan Fontcuberta, always attentive to this microcosm of surprising shapes. To finish with the virtual space of a permanent pass that Antoni Muntadas once again offers us as the true measure of the world.
Colección del IVAM. XXV Aniversario
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