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Peter Schjeldahl Reviews "1969" at P.S.1 and Says: No Young Need Apply.

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center presents 1969, a large scale exhibition occupying the entire second floor with works drawn from every department of The Museum of Modern Art. Exploring a cross section of art made during a period marked with revolution and socio-political tumult, this exhibition also will embrace five interventions by a current generation of artists whose work reflects the concerns of 1969 and brings the exhibition into the present. These younger artists will be given free reign to respond to the works on view and to the time period in general.
“1969” is authentically lugubrious; the only truly depressing aspect of the show is the inclusion of new work by young artists who prove that conceptually driven art, as a phenomenon in and about institutions, has gone essentially nowhere in forty years. Stephanie Syjuco re-creates works by Beuys. Why? (Richard Pettibone’s miniature repainting of a Frank Stella was already jejune in 1969.) Hank Willis Thomas reasonably—but tediously—fills in a missing African-American perspective with pieces reproducing pictures and headlines from Ebony and Jet. Messy installations by a group called the Bruce High Quality Foundation coyly critique museum functions. It seems that we’ll never be permitted to graduate from the university of the obvious.
The artists acting as commentators are Base, The Bruce High Quality Foundation, Mathew Day Jackson and David Tompkins, Stephanie Syjuco, and Hank Willis Thomas.

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