SEATTLE — There's a giant paper mache puppet surrounded by a chaotic crowd of clowns in one gallery. A lascivious pot with lips and protruding tongue can be found another. Near the entry way, you'll find a painted toilet that dares you to look inside the bowl.
These are just some of the funky works of art to be found in the Seattle Art Museum's new exhibition "Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture," which celebrates the aesthetic practices that emerged across the West Coast in the 1960s and ’70s.
"These are artists who are very intentionally working in reaction against, and kind of rebuttal, to the mainstream art market that was happening in New York," said the exhibition curator Carrie Dedon. "Here we have artists very intentionally adopting the opposite strategies so work that is tactile and homemade, work that is lumpy, weird, ugly on purpose, work that is boldly colored. All these ideas are supposed to kind of challenge our assumptions of art can be and should be."
The exhibition is almost entirely drawn from SAM's permanent collection. Some pieces have never been seen before. Others, like Robert Arneson's "Pool With Splash," has to be pieced together like a crossword puzzle. The exhibition seeks to expand the number of artists attached to the counterculture movement and includes multiple ceramic artists from Seattle, including former University of Washington professor Patti Warashina.
"There were a lot of moments of discovery in this exhibition," Dedon said. "A lot of moments of great joy, works that we had never seen assembled before, works that I knew had been in storage waiting in the wings for their moment for a long time. And it's always joy when we trove the treasures of the collection. And celebrate that backbone collection that makes up SAM."
"Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture" runs through September 2 at the Seattle Art Museum.
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