Pictures Generation

In 1977 art historian and critic Douglas Crimp organized a five person group show at New York Ciry’s Artist Space gallery. The artists exhibited from September 24 to October 29, 1977 were Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo and Philip Smith. 

In his catalogue essay for the 1977 show and a 1979 expansion of the essay published in the journal October, Crimp outlined a framework to describe shared themes in the work of the five artists he presented. In general, these were an interest in representational imagery, and references to mass media that the artists explored through "processes of quotation, excerptation, framing, and staging."

In 2009 The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984 was an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art . Curator Douglas Eklund argued that, from the perspective of three decades later, it is evident that Crimp's observations described a widely shared sensibility among artists of the 1970s and 80s.

Artists in the Met exhibition included art stars of the 1980s such as Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, Robert Longo, David Salle, Richard Prince, Jack Goldstein and Sherrie Levine, together with lesser-known contemporaries such as Troy Brauntuch and Michael Zwack. It also featured some of the group's artistic predecessors including John Baldessari and Allan McCollum. The artists in Crimp's 1977 show were Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo and Philip Smith. For the 1979 expansion of his catalogue essay, Crimp deleted Philip Smith and added Cindy Sherman.

A few artists grouped under the "Pictures Generation" category, such as Sherrie Levine and Richard Prince, have been involved in legal disputes concerning their appropriation of content protected by intellectual property laws, particularly copyright law.

It is impossible to divorce the success of the artists from the spaces that supported them. As with the artists themselves, the galleries—among those featured here are Mary Boone, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Jay Gorney, Nature Morte, Metro Pictures, Mai 36 Sprüth Magers amongst others — became some of the most iconic galleries for contemporary art. 

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