The Pictures Generation was both the name of an exhibition at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art (April 29- August 2, 2009) and a means to an end in being the first formal labeling of a group of artists exhibited around their appropriation of images from the consumer and media saturated age in which they grew to maturity both artistically and in years. The exhibition, curated by Douglas Eklund (with an accompanying catalogue from Yale University Press) in his museum debut, featured prominent art stars from the nineteen eighties such as Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is an American photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits. Sherman currently lives and works in New York City. In 1995, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. She is represented by Sprüth Magers Berlin London in and Metro Pictures gallery in...

, Robert Longo

Robert Longo

Robert Longo is an American painter and sculptor. Longo became famous in the 1980s for his "Men in the Cities" series, which depicted sharply dressed businessmen writhing in contorted emotion.-Early life and education:...

, David Salle

David Salle

David Salle is an American painter who helped define postmodern sensibility by combining figuration with a varied pictorial language of multi-imagery...

, Richard Prince

Richard Prince

Richard Prince is an American painter and photographer. Prince began appropriating photographs in 1975...

, Jack Goldstein

Jack Goldstein

Jack Goldstein was a Canadian born, California-based performance and conceptual artist turned painter in the 1980s art boom.-Early life and education:...

 and Sherrie Levine

Sherrie Levine

Sherrie Levine is an American photographer and appropriation artist.-Education:Levine received her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1969. In 1973, she earned an M.F.A. from the same institution....

, as well as their artistic predecessors such as John Baldessari

John Baldessari

John Anthony Baldessari is an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images. He lives and works in Santa Monica and Venice, California...

, and artists who emerged with them in the New York art world who needed to be put back on a level playing field with their compatriots again such as Troy Brauntuch

Troy Brauntuch

Troy Brauntuch is an American artist.He graduated from California Institute of the Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1975.He was Adjunct Professor at Columbia University and teaches at the University of Texas....

 and Michael Zwack. Basically this orbit of artists emerged from two sources, the diaspora of Cal Arts and the founders of the Hallwalls

Hallwalls

Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center is a non-profit organization in Buffalo, N.Y. that showcases artists of diverse backgrounds in film, video, literature, music, performance, media and visual arts. Since its inception, Hallwalls has been dedicated to promoting artists from multiple backgrounds and...

 non-profit gallery in Buffalo, New York

Buffalo, New York

Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...

.

Inevitably, as time has gone on and the label has begun to stick writers have argued that other artists not included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art such as Eric Fischl

Eric Fischl

Eric Fischl is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker.-Early life:Fischl was born in New York City and grew up on suburban Long Island; his family moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1967...

 and Julian Schnabel

Julian Schnabel

Julian Schnabel is an American artist and filmmaker. In the 1980s, Schnabel received international media attention for his "plate paintings"—large-scale paintings set on broken ceramic plates....

 were a part of this group, the latter of whom Norman Rosenthal

Norman Rosenthal

Sir Norman Rosenthal is a British curator. He was Exhibitions Secretary at the Royal Academy from 1977 until 2008. His encyclopedic programme of exhibitions which stretched from Egyptian antiquities to recent art production, included the exhibition of Charles Saatchi's collection of contemporary...

 the curator of Schnabel's 2011 retrospective at the Museo Correr

Museo Correr

The Museo Correr is the civic museum of Venice, located in the Piazza San Marco, and is entered by the ceremonial stairway in the Ala Napoleonica at the western end of the Piazza opposite the church of San Marco at the other end...

 in Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

 in the catalogue for the aforementioned show calls both "a leader and an outsider of the so-called Pictures Generation".

External links

• The Pictures Generation at the Met
• Douglas Eklund essay on the exhibition
• A review of the exhibition in The New York Times
  The New York Times
  The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
  
  
• The exhibition catalogue from Yale University Press
  Yale University Press
  Yale University Press is a book publisher founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day. It became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but remains financially and operationally autonomous....