And Now The Good News

Shocking, striking, disturbing, intelligent – and eminently plastic … the works in the Annette and Peter Nobel collection, which we discovered at the Pera Museum in Istanbul, hit the nail on the head. What do they have in common? Newsprint. The guiding principle of the collection? News, as Edward Ruscha wrote in silk-screened letters in 1970, or more ambiguously, Trevor Guthrie in 2007 (We report/You decide), or more explicitly, Özlem Günyol & Mustafa Kunt titling a polyptych printed on newsprint: There are things you don’t know that we know … 

Good news, bad news, and fake news: here is the mass media delivered to the artistic vindictiveness, the newspapers fallen into the hands of painters, poets, and visual artists… Packed, cut out, crossed out, crumpled, compressed, illuminated, burnt or even studded… the diversions and re-uses are multiple. From Fernand Léger to Robert Longo, from Hans Arp to Hanspetter Hofmann and Beni Bischof, from Georges Braque to César or Christo, from Erwin Blumenfeld to Mimmo Rotella, from Asper Jorn to Andreas Gursky, Gerhard Richter and Günther Uecker, the number of artists who have made use of this discarded material is fascinating. 164, through some 300 works, are presented here. 

“And Now The Good News” traces dialogue in the last 150 years between press and art –works from the Nobel collection at the Pera Museum

Pera Museum, Beyoglu, Istanbul

Until 7 August

www.peramuzesi.org

Stéphanie Dulout