Concurrent with Meryl's Streep's Oscar win for portraying Margaret Thatcher, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Chicago presents this massive show of art work from the 1980s. Organized into four broad categories - The End is Near, Democracy, Gender Trouble, and Desire and Longing - it's also easily browsed by artist name and titles of works. The categories are designated by color coded dots; e.g. Democracy is green, Gender Trouble, yellow. Raymond Pettibon's "No Title (To Dust Cover...Shut)," 1984, looking like the cover of blood splotched comic book, fits into the category The End is Near. Jeff Wall's "Picture for Women," 1979, from the Gender Trouble category, takes its inspiration from feminist art historical theory. Specifically, feminists argue that throughout history, the tradition in Western art is to show men gazing at passive women, as opposed to Wall's photograph showing a male photographer gazing at a woman.
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