Carolee Schneemann | Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason 1950–1980 | The Met Breuer

Hales is delighted to announce the inclusion of Carolee Schneemann's Viet Flakes in The Met Breuer exhibition Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason 1950–1980 . 

 

Delirious times demand delirious art, or so this exhibition proposes. The years between 1950 and 1980 were beset by upheaval. Around the globe, military conflict proliferated and social and political unrest flared. Disenchantment with an oppressive rationalism mounted, as did a corollary interest in fantastic, hallucinatory experiences. Artists responded to these developments by incorporating absurdity, disorder, nonsense, disorientation, and repetition into their work. In the process, they destabilize space and perception, give form to extreme mental, emotional, and physical states, and derange otherwise logical structures and techniques. Delirious explores the embrace of irrationality among American, Latin American, and European artists.

 

Divided into four sections—Vertigo, Excess, Nonsense, and Twisted—this exhibition showcases roughly 100 works of art by 62 artists, including Antonio Berni, Dara Birnbaum, Tony Conrad, Hanne Darboven, Dean Fleming, Nancy Grossman, Philip Guston, Eva Hesse, Alfred Jensen, Yayoi Kusama, Sol LeWitt, Darcílio Lima, Lee Lozano, Anna Maria Maiolino, Ana Mendieta, Bruce Nauman, Jim Nutt, Hélio Oiticica, Claes Oldenburg, Abraham Palatnik, Howardena Pindell, Peter Saul, Mira Schendel, Carolee Schneemann, Paul Sharits, Robert Smithson, Nancy Spero, Paul Thek, and Stan VanDerBeek. About a third of the exhibition is drawn from The Met collection. Linked by a common distrust of reason, the featured works alternately simulate and stimulate delirium, straining the limits of both legibility and intelligibility. Ultimately, the exhibition asks if it is possible to understand a good deal of postwar art, even seemingly rational art, as an exercise in calculated lunacy.

 


 

Carolee Schneemann

Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason 1950–1980

The Met Breuer 

945 Madison Avenue

New York, NY 10021

 

13 September 2017 - 14 January 2018

 

For more information please visit the MET website here.

October 13, 2017