Broad Warriors
’80s Sturm und Drang revisited
Koons and Sherman are among the artists whom the Broads have collected in depth. Many collectors are fashion-driven and want only a single representative work by whoever‘s on the cover of this month’s Art issues. Many museums are insufficiently funded to acquire a cross section of a given artist‘s output, and most curators have to pander to a highfalutin lowest common denominator to pay their dues. In contrast, the Broad Foundation has been able to maintain an active interest in the careers of its artists over years, even decades, creating a private collection of diverse miniature retrospectives that has few rivals in the world. The Broads own one of the largest collections of Sherman photographs anywhere, and the selection included in the LACMA show charts her progression from Alfred Hitchcock to Alejandro Jodorowski admirably. In spite of their sometime endorsement by chilly academics, Sherman and Koons are artists whose work seems both funnier and more formally engaged in retrospect than it did at first glance.
An even more generous selection of Cindy’s work will be on display at the Broad Art Foundation itself, to art professionals, artists, academics and graduate students. (But we also have to look at alleged paintings by Christopher Wool, so pity us.) Those who qualify can also peruse the Robert Therrien sculptures that will be included in the version of “Johns to Koons” that travels to Washington and Boston, and check out the just-acquired discombobulating photo-realist photo-murals of Andreas Gursky. But the main show at LACMA contains more than enough to chew on, with over 100 works ranging from the underrated late canvases of Johns to the unjustly despised straw, tar and burlap conglomerations of Angstmeister Kiefer. Much of this work is familiar only through reproduction or by reputation, and, though it only skims the surface of the wealth of material accumulated by the Broad collections over the last quarter-century, it offers the public a rare opportunity to actually confront these works and make up our own minds.
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