"AND NOW THE GOOD NEWS “

Works from the Annette and Peter Nobel Collection

MASI Museum, Lugano 2016
Curated by Elio Schenini and Christoph Doswald

The newspaper is probably an object that best characterizes the spirit of modern life. From the mid-19th century, everyday life was articulated around daily newspapers and their images. Through their pages, we develop our relationship with the flow of time and world events, events that may become ever-more insignificant, until they dissolve into oblivion or, on the contrary, assert themselves as defining moments of an epoch, historical landmarks.
It is not by chance, therefore, when, amid the intertwining of art and life begun by the artistic movements at the start of the 20th century, the newspaper becomes one of the favorite subjects of linguistic experimentation, used by artists, now as then, to question reality. The artistic use of printed material, whether as subject or support, an element of composition or conceptual reference, is the basis for an extraordinary collection compiled by Annette and Peter Nobel during the final quarter of the last century. Starting from paintings, drawings and collages by representatives of Cubism, Dadaism and Surrealism - Braque, Arp, Schwitters, Miró and Giacometti - through representatives of the neo-avant-gardes of the 1960s such as de Kooning, Warhol, Beuys, Boetti, Christo and Polke, it reaches right to the present day, including some of the major representatives from the current artistic scene, including Muntadas, Kentridge, Signer and Muniz. Comprising a wide selection of works belonging to the collection, the exhibition blends social narrative, contemplative reflection, political criticism, phenomenological enquiry and ironic subversion, represents an exciting opportunity to reflect on the evolution of artistic languages from the beginning of the 20th century until today, and on the history of today’s reality.
The exhibition catalogue of the same name published by Edizioni Casagrande contains colour illustrations of all of the exhibited works, the critical texts of the two curators, Elio Schenini and Christoph Doswald, texts by the French philosopher, Jean Baudrillard and the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn, and a preface by the Director of the Museum, Marco Franciolli.

Participating artists:

Hans Arp, Alighiero Boetti, John Baldessari, Georges Braque, Olaf Breuning, Joseph Beuys, Christo, Alberto Giacometti, Gilbert & George, Ryan Gander, Candida Höfer, Alfredo Jaar, On Kawara, William Kentridge, Jannis Kounellis, Joseph Kosuth, Barbara Kruger, Robert Longo, Olaf Metzel, Joan Miró, Vik Muniz, Willem de Kooning, Antoni Muntadas, Sigmar Polke, Richard Prince, Robert Rauschenberg, Kurt Schwitters, Roman Signer, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rosemarie Trockel, Panos Tsagaris, Kelley Walker, Andy Warhol.