New, Used and Improved

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The New York art scene of the 1980sespecially its downtown galleries, studios and rock clubsis the focus of this free-wheeling survey. Beginning in the late '70s when rock'n'roll performer Robert Longo redirected New Wave energy back into Neo Pop pictures, the authors look at ``post-modernists,'' whose works often subvert mass-media imagery. Along with Keith Haring's kinetic doodles and Kenny Scharf's fun-filled yet menacing cartoon faces, examples shown include Barbara Kruger's feminist juxtapositions of photographs and text, John Ahearn's ``lifecasting'' sculptures and Mike Bidlo's outrageous re-creations of works by Jackson Pollock and Brancusi. From ``Fun Artists'' who transform toasters and baby cribs to street artists creating site-specific constructions or anxiety-inducing shadow figures on walls, this survey catalogues trends and artists invisible in other books. (October)