Deborah KassThe Art History Paintings 1989-1992

From 1989-1992 Deborah Kass created The Art History Paintings, a series that established themes and strategies she would deploy for the rest of her career.

Sourcing images from art history and popular culture, Kass examined how meaning, power, and value were constructed by the traditional narratives of art history. These works were created in the context of 1980s, a decade in which women painters and people of color were routinely excluded from galleries and museum exhibitions.

Engaging the work of twentieth-century conical artists (the pillars of every museum collection) she still refers to as her first loves, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Walt Disney, Charles Schulz, combined with elements from disparate sources, with her surprising juxtapositions of familiar images, Kass hijacked and repurposed “the canon” and with skill, wit, and jouissance made it speak for her.

Kass’ series was contemporaneous with other artists who were also deconstructing power through media-based practices and should be seen as part of that critical project. But by meeting the “greats” on their own playing field, painting, Kass makes us see history differently by confronting how this ageless form reinscribed white male dominance, while she maintained a commitment to deep visual pleasure so specific to painting.

Her prescient project is ever more important today, as her Art History Paintings continue to reveal that which is still relentlessly obscured by the powers that be. In 2025 the work of representation continues with profound political and existential urgency.

For more information, please contact Andrew Blackley (andrew@salon94.com)