"Optical Noise: American & British Prints/Films from the 1960s-1970s:

David Winton Bell Gallery 

List Art Center, Brown University, 64 College Street, Providence, RI   (view map)

Pop art and photorealism movements were key parts of the arts scene four or five decades ago, and Brown University’s new “Optical Noise: American & British Prints/Films from the 1960s-1970s” exhibit milks examples from the style to provide parallels between the two. Fragmentation and montage bubbled up in the work of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, and a more kinetic language, which allowed room for designed clashes, took on import. List Art Gallery, 64 College Street, Providence, notes that it was critic Leo Steinberg who came up with the term optical noise. “The objective of this exhibit is neither to challenge nor to replace such well-worn labels [like pop art and photorealism], which remain useful for various purposes, but to draw attention to what is shared by these works, specifically what might be called “optical noise.” The show runs through February 21 | news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2012/01/optical

with works by Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Eduardo Paolozzi, Andy Warhol, Ronald Stein, Bruce Conner, Robert Cottingham, Richard Estes, Chuck Close, and others