“Assemblage is a new medium,” curator William Seitz declared in the catalogue for The Art of Assemblage, a 1961 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art. Everyday objects, popular consumer products, and other nontraditional materials had become, Seitz wrote, “the language for impatient, hypercritical, and anarchistic young artists,” who sought to create an art that—in its subject matter, materials, and making—was closely intertwined with life.
In dialogue with that exhibition—which showcased a group of contemporary artists with key figures of an earlier generation— this gallery considers assemblage through the lens of today. It presents the work of artists from around the world, primarily active in the 1950s and ’60s, who embraced the materials of their immediate surroundings—from kitchenware, automobile parts, and newspaper clippings to chicken wire, taxidermy, and food scraps. Together, these artists posed a new set of conditions for art, in which all parts of daily life were fair game.
Organized by Cara Manes, Associate Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, with Rachel Rosin, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Drawings and Prints and Department of Curatorial Affairs.
