Born from the riotous energy of the 1970s, the contemporary movement known as the Pictures Generation was defined by a rebellious approach that turned away from object-based Minimalism and ushered in a new era of image-based art making. Culling inspiration from advertisement, film and television, and creating visual spaces for social criticism, the Pictures Generation artists were deeply influenced by the pedagogy of writers such as Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Julia Kristeva. The first formal accumulation of work took place in 1977 during a show at Artists Space, “Pictures,” curated by Douglas Crimp. Named for each of the five artist’s use of appropriated images, this monumental exhibition would spawn a generation of visual and theoretical exploration, fueled by subjective documentation and criticism of accelerating commercialism. In his accompanying text, Crimp addressed the theoretical and thematic issues in this new work—the interplay between fetishism and desire, beauty and romanticism, as well as media representations of the post-Vietnam age. Crimp also acknowledged the influence of photo-conceptualists such as John Baldessari, whose groundbreaking work expanded the process of image making.

 The original five artists in “Pictures,” Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo and Philip Smith, would expand in the eighties to include Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, Barbara Kruger, Laurie Simmons, Louise Lawler, and David Salle.  Many of these young artists emerged from two creative orbits based out of Hallwalls, a non-profit gallery in Buffalo New York, and Cal Arts, where Baldessari taught in Los Angeles. In 2009 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York put on an exhibition entitled “The Pictures Generation: 1974-84,” which showcased both Crimp’s original characterization of “Pictures,” and the evolution of the movement—following the various processes of excerption, framing, staging and appropriation. Key works, such as Longo’s Men in the Cities (1979–82) and Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills established a critical assessment of media. Integrating photography, kitsch, psychoanalysis and critical theory, the influence of the Pictures Generation on postmodern conceptualism is still seen within the work of many contemporary artists such as Lorna Simpson, Margaret Lee, and Olaf Breuning.