Open This End features both iconic and lesser-known works from some of the most significant artists of the last 50 years. The title, from a 1962 Warhol painting included in the show, suggests that the exhibition is a present to be unwrapped, a surprise that audiences will delight in discovering.
The painting, sculpture, drawing, collage, photography, video, installation and mixed media of more than 30 artists is employed by the exhibition to present several different narratives in the history of art from the 1960s to the present. (All artists referenced here are in the show.) One narrative starts with the Pop Art of Warhol and Ed Ruscha and includes Conceptual Art (by Ruscha, John Baldessari and Bruce Nauman) and Minimalism (by Agnes Martin and Tony Smith). This narrative gave rise to the Pictures Generation art of Cindy Sherman, Louise Lawler and Sherrie Levine, as well as to later practices, such as those of Rita McBride, Bruce Helander and Christopher Williams. The German variant of Pop Art put forth by Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke may be seen as a forerunner to the paintings of Martin Kippenberger, Albert Oehlen and Marlene Dumas. The body-oriented performance art of Vito Acconci and Paul McCarthy finds echoes not only in McCarthy's later work, but also in the psychologically inflected art of Mike Kelley and Martin Kersels.
Beginning in the 1990s, artists focused on the personal as political, by drawing on the same legacies from the 1960s and '70s, as well as the work of other artists such as David Hammons. The work of Glenn Ligon, Mark Bradford, Paul Pfeiffer, Kehinde Wiley and Wangechi Mutu touches upon issues of race, culture and identity, while the art of Felix Gonzalez-Torres addresses sexuality, loss and the vulnerable queer body in the age of AIDS. Figurative sculptors such as Juan Muñoz, Thomas Houseago and Matthew Monahan also picture the body, subject to various deformations, both artistic and psychological.