With the exhibition Hyper Real – Kunst und Amerika um 1970 the Ludwig Forum Aachen celebrates its 20th anniversary. The Mother Ship of the Ludwig Collection, which is today distributed around the world, will function as a link for a first collaborative series of exhibitions in the Ludwig Museums in Aachen, Vienna and Budapest.
The Aachen station explores artistic reflections on the American Way of Life in the context of social and political developments. The exhibition brings together 250 works by 100 artists who have not yet been seen in Germany in such abundance and collocation. In historical, aesthetic and social terms, the curators have placed Photorealism from around 1970 in the context of parallel art movements Pop Art, Concept Art, Land Art and New Topographics. The historical background of artistic exploration in those days consisted of events like the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement and the oil crisis. The exuberant image worlds of the USA, its consumer culture, landscapes, suburbs and brownfields also fascinated many of the most influential photographers of the day, and their works are represented in the exhibition by prominent names like Lewis Baltz, William Eggleston, Lee Friedlander, Stephen Shore and Garry Winogrand.
Hyper Real traces an art-historical arc from the image worlds of Lichtenstein and Warhol, through controversy over a new realism and the significance of individual themes like city and landscape, to the works of Basquiat, Haring, Koons and Demand.
A film programme and historical posters, books, sounds and record sleeves offer further insights into US-American daily life in the 1970s and the sense of lifestyle back then.
Curated by: Dr. Brigitte Franzen and Anna Sophia Schultz
The exhibition is co-sponsored by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation) and the Kulturstiftung der Länder (Cultural Foundation of the Federal States).
Hyper Real – Art and America around 1970, Installation Views
Photos: Carl Brunn / Ludwig Forum Aachen
