Ends and Exits

The seeds of what would come to be known as the Pictures Generation began in Los Angeles at CalArts where conceptual artist John Baldessari helped shape the careers of many artists, such as Troy Brauntuch, Matt Mullican, Jack Goldstein and David Salle. Curators, writers, and critics of the era grappled with an emerging sense that pictures rather than paintings were of importance in our postmodern world, subjecting the traditions of painting and image-making to scrutiny in response to an emerging media landscape and other seismic cultural shifts.