The American Dream: Pop to the Present

Confused exhibition at the British Museum looking at American art since the Second World War via prints.

This exhibition has been advertised for a long time and I felt had been shown as a great pop art show examining the American Dream however by using only print media it felt quite thin if that was what it was trying to deliver. The show felt disjointed as it tried to be too many things. As well as being an overview of US art it also looked at how new print techniques brought new tools for creative ideas, it examined that technology in some detail, it showed US cultural and social history in the period as well as examining the American Dream of the title.

There were interesting works but the whole thing was so huge I did find myself turning off after a while. My favourite section was on Jaspar Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Jim Dine. This was a nice postscript to the recent Rauschenberg exhibition at Tate Modern and I love Jaspar Johns’ work. I also liked the contrast between that work and the next gallery on West Coast artists.

I loved two prints by Robert Bechtle of food, bacon and eggs and a lunch. Also a life sized print of a woman by Robert Longo either dancing or in pain, it was a wonderful elegant but contorted figure.

I have to commend one wonderful hang where a reworking of an Ed Ruscha picture of a petrol station in white was hung by a window in the display through which you could see the original coloured version for a few decades earlier. The show was also an interesting use of the museum’s new exhibition space and it felt very different to previous uses. It shows how flexible the space is.

Closes on 18 June 2017

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