Talent (1986), is a photographic work by David Robbins comprising eighteen photographs that depict contemporary artists such as Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, Robert Longo, and fourteen others using the headshot portraits long-utilized by the entertainment industry.
To make the 8 x 10, black-and-white photographs Robbins hired the James J. Kriegsmann studio, a company specializing in headshot photography. During the several-month long period of making the photographs in Kriegsmann's Times Square studio in New York City, Robbins functioned as the "agent" for the artists – scheduling the shoots, styling the artists' look, and paying the bill. The resultant collection of headshots were produced in an edition of 100 as, according to the Kriegsmann Studio, aspiring entertainers seeking work customarily order them. [1]
Talent updated the image of the artist from that of modern art's tortured genius to, instead, a more complex portrayal of a willing participant in the entertainment industry. The piece was instrumental in modernizing the art context for the Information Age. Visual artists such as Degas and Picasso had long depicted musicians, harlequins, and actors using fine art media, and the Pop artists had introduced commercial production techniques such as silkscreen to create images taken from popular culture, but Talent collapsed the distance at which visual artists had previously held entertainment culture. [2]
The eighteen artists featured in the piece include Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, Robert Longo, Allan McCollum, Ashley Bickerton, Michael J. Byron, Thomas Lawson, Clegg & Guttmann, Jennifer Bolande, Larry Johnson, Alan Belcher, Peter Nagy, Steven Parrino, Joel Otterson, Robin Weglinski, Gretchen Bender, and David Robbins.
In May 2012 artist Michelle Grabner curated "25 Years of Talent," an exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, featuring later work from each of the artists included in the original piece.
Jenny Holzer is an American neo-conceptual artist, based in Hoosick, New York. The main focus of her work is the delivery of words and ideas in public spaces and includes large-scale installations, advertising billboards, projections on buildings and other structures, and illuminated electronic displays.
Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with the Pictures Generation. She is most known for her collage style that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captions, stated in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed text. The phrases in her works often include pronouns such as "you", "your", "I", "we", and "they", addressing cultural constructions of power, identity, consumerism, and sexuality. Kruger's artistic mediums include photography, sculpture, graphic design, architecture, as well as video and audio installations.
Cynthia Morris Sherman is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters.
Robert Longo is a Pictures Generation American artist, filmmaker, photographer and musician.
David Salle is a Pictures Generation American painter, printmaker, photographer, and stage designer. Salle was born in Norman, Oklahoma, and lives and works in East Hampton, New York. He earned a BFA and MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California, where he studied with John Baldessari. Salle’s work first came to public attention in New York in the early 1980s.
David Robbins is an artist and writer who was one of the first to investigate the art world's entrance into the culture industry.
Appropriation in art is the use of pre-existing objects or images with little or no transformation applied to them. The use of appropriation has played a significant role in the history of the arts. In the visual arts, to appropriate means to properly adopt, borrow, recycle or sample aspects of human-made visual culture. Notable in this respect are the Readymades of Marcel Duchamp.
Jeffrey Lynn Koons is an American artist recognized for his work dealing with popular culture and his sculptures depicting everyday objects, including balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror-finish surfaces. He lives and works in both New York City and his hometown of York, Pennsylvania. His works have sold for substantial sums, including at least two record auction prices for a work by a living artist: US$58.4 million for Balloon Dog (Orange) in 2013 and US$91.1 million for Rabbit in 2019.
REALLIFE Magazine was a publication featuring written and visual material by and about young artists that was co-founded and published by artist Thomas Lawson and writer Susan Morgan between 1979 and 1994. It served as a clearing house for new ideas and examinations of mass media and art, while chronicling New York’s developing postmodern alternative art scene. It was strongly associated with the "Pictures Generation" group of artists.
Sprüth Magers is a commercial art gallery owned by Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers, with spaces in London, Berlin, Los Angeles and offices in Cologne, Hong Kong, and Seoul. The gallery represents over sixty artists and estates, including John Baldessari, George Condo, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Andreas Gursky, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, David Ostrowski, and Rosemarie Trockel.
Parkett was an international magazine specializing in art. The magazine ceased publication in Summer 2017 with its 100th issue and now continues online as a time capsule and archive with some 270 in-depth artists portraits, artists documents, newsletters and more at www.parkettart.com.
Real Art Ways is a non-profit art space established in 1975. Located at 56 Arbor Street in the Parkville neighborhood of Hartford, Connecticut, Real Art Ways exhibits visual art, houses an independent cinema and presents live music, theater, and literary and community events.
Bill Beckley is an American narrative/conceptual artist.
Banality is a series of sculptures by American artist Jeff Koons. The works were unveiled in 1988 and have become controversial for their use of copyrighted images. Several editions of the sculptures have sold at auction for millions of dollars.
James J. Kriegsmann was a celebrity and theatrical photographer who worked from 1929 to the early 1960s.
Michael Jackson and Bubbles is a porcelain sculpture by the American artist Jeff Koons. It was created in 1988 within the framework of his Banality series.
Nancy Dwyer is an American contemporary artist whose works include paintings, works on paper, public art, word sculpture and furniture art. Her work has been exhibited widely at venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, the New Museum in New York and many others. Her work was included in the 2009 exhibition “The Pictures Generation” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, alongside the work of her peers and contemporaries, including Cindy Sherman and Robert Longo, with whom she cofounded Hallwalls in Buffalo, New York in 1974, as well as work by Barbara Kruger, Richard Prince, John Baldessari, Louise Lawler and Sherrie Levine, among others.
Gretchen Bender was an American artist who worked in film, video, and photography. She was from the so-called 1980s Pictures Generation of artists, which included Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo, Jack Goldstein, Laurie Simmons and Richard Prince, and who mixed elements of Conceptual Art and Pop Art using images from popular culture to examine its powerful codes.
Untitled #153 is a color photograph made by American visual artist Cindy Sherman in 1985. In 2010, a print was auctioned for $2.7 million, making it one of the most expensive photographs ever sold at that time.
'Untitled Film Stills' is a series of black and white photographs by American visual artist Cindy Sherman predominantly made between 1977 and 1980, which gained her international recognition. Sherman casts herself in various stereotypical female roles inspired by 1950's and 1960's films. They represent clichés or feminine types "that are deeply embedded in the cultural imagination."