Hammer Museum on Thursday

I roamed around the Hammer Museum on Thursday and was interested in two exhibits:  "Take It or Leave It...Institution, Image, Ideology" and "Tea and Morphine...Women In Paris, 1880 to 1914."

The "Take I or Leave It" exhibit is described as "locating shared impulses among those artist who borrow and recast existing images, styles and forms from popular mass-media and fine art sources."  It includes the works of 36 artists from 1970 to 1990 in the U.S.  The era "witnessed a number of significant events that reverberated in the art world:  the AIDS crisis, Ronald Reagan's 'trickle down" economics and the significant recession, the Iran-Contra affair, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, ....the War On Drugs, the first public discussion of global warming, ...Tiananmen Square in Beijing,...the beating of Rodney King, the murder of Matthew Shepard,...culture wars in which federal funding for the arts was utilized as a tool for censorship."  Here is a bit of what I saw:

The above two works cover the walls of the entry stairs to the museum created for the show by Barbara Kruger, 2014, digital print on vinyl.

"Backyard Story," 1997 by Haim Steinbach.  The description states "oddly beautiful, conceptually precise and disarmingly humorous works...crafted like words into poems."

"Michael Jackson Fucked Up Big Head Big Foot," 2010 by Paul McCarthy, carbon fiber.  "Riffing on Jeff Koons's infamous sculpture "Michael Jackson and Bubbles" 1988, this work by Paul McCarthy explodes all sense of decorum to call out the potential valences of meaning available in the late pop icon;s image."

"Killers Killed," 1994-2007 by Mark Dion, tree, taxidermic animals, tar, galvanized aluminum, foam, paint.  "Rounded up and killed for crimes no greater than following their natural survival instincts, these animals exist as outlaws forced to live on the margins of society...implicating humans as the most insidious predators of all."

The second exhibit is entitled "Tea and Morphine:  Women in Paris, 1880 to 1914."  The museum notes state:  "Although art of the period often idealized women, this exhibition highlights grittier, darker images exploring the range of female experience - shining a light into the shadows."  "Tea and morphine - the one a refreshing beverage, the other  powerful narcotic derived from opium - would come to symbolize the extremes in women's lives in France, especially in Paris...tea was for good girls while morphine was often the bad girls' choice...both used to soothe nerves...and women had many reasons to be on edge."

Cover of th print portfolio Amour, 1899 by Maurice Denis (French, 1870-1943)

"I want gunpowder and bullets," 1897 by George Auriol (French, 1883-1938)

Poster for the Salon des Cent," 1895 by Fernand Fau (French, 1858-1919)

"Temptation," 1897 by Eugene Grasset (French, 1841-1917)
"A sexy, saucy Eve...looks at the tempting apple with hunger in her eyes."

"Morphine addicts, or The plume," 1887 by Alber Besnard (French, 1849-1934)

"Morphine Addict," 1897 by Eugene Grasset

Poster for the 17th Salon des Cent Exhibition, 1897 by Paul Berthon (French, 1872-1909)
"Berthon created a vibrant image of a very young, saucy, modern woman, part innocent waif and part seductress."