Pictures Generation

Laurie Simmons, Blonde/Red Dress/Kitchen/Milk, 1978

The Development of Artistic Trends Across Eras: The Pictures Generation, 1977–1990

The Pictures Generation refers to a group of American artists who emerged in the late 1970s and 1980s, united by their critical engagement with images from mass media, advertising, television, and art history. Rather than create new, original imagery, these artists used appropriation, quotation, and recontextualization to challenge ideas of authorship, originality, and identity.
The term comes from the 1977 Pictures exhibition at Artists Space in New York, curated by Douglas Crimp. It highlighted how these artists, many influenced by feminism and post-structuralist theory, used photography, film stills, and commercial aesthetics to question how meaning and identity are constructed in visual culture.
Rather than expressing emotion or personal narratives in the traditional sense, The Pictures Generation often created cool, calculated, and highly conceptual works that reflected how people absorb roles, stereotypes, and ideologies through mass media. Their art became a powerful critique of image culture and the commodification of identity.

Richard Prince, Untitled (four single men with interchangeable backgrounds looking to the right), 1977

Key Features of the Pictures Generation:

Reuses or imitates existing imagery from media, film, or art history to question originality, authorship, or representation.

Notable Artists of the Pictures Generation include:

• Cindy Sherman • Sherrie Levine • Barbara Kruger • Richard Prince	• Laurie Simmons • Louise Lawler • Robert Longo
Popularity:	The Pictures Generation had a lasting impact on contemporary photography and conceptual art, particularly in its influence on feminist, postmodern, and identity-based practices. Their work is now widely exhibited and studied in institutions globally.
Period:	1977–1990

Laurie Simmons,
Blonde/Red Dress/Kitchen/Milk, 1978

Cultural Eras:

This movement emerged during the rise of television, advertising, and consumer culture in North America. It paralleled academic shifts in literary theory and cultural criticism that questioned the authority of authors and the stability of meaning.

Artists and Art of Note in the Pictures Generation

Cindy Sherman (b. 1954)

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is one of the most influential figures of the Pictures Generation. Her Untitled Film Stills (1977–1980) series features black-and-white photographs of herself dressed in the guise of stereotypical female characters, like the ingénue, the housewife, or the film noir femme fatale.
Rather than revealing her identity, Sherman uses costume, makeup, and pose to expose how femininity is performed and packaged through film and media. The images feel familiar, yet they are not based on specific movies, only our collective memory of cinematic tropes.
Sherman’s work challenges the idea of a fixed self or an “authentic” image, asking the viewer to question how roles are assigned and repeated in visual culture. Her use of self-portraiture becomes a tool of critique, rather than confession.

Cindy Sherman,
Untitled Film Stills #43, 1979

Sherrie Levine (b. 1947)

Sherrie Levine

Sherrie Levine is best known for her acts of direct appropriation. In works like After Walker Evans (1981), she rephotographed famous Depression-era images by Evans and presented them as her own. This deliberate gesture questioned the originality and ownership of images, as well as the idea of the “male genius” in art history.
By copying canonical works, Levine confronts the viewer with uncomfortable questions: Is it still art if it’s a copy? Who controls the narrative of art history? Is authorship even relevant in a world saturated with reproduction?
Levine’s practice critiques both the structures of the art world and the broader systems of cultural production. Her work remains a cornerstone of debates around appropriation and intellectual property in contemporary art.

Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans: 4, 1981 Sherrie Levine,
After Walker Evans: 4, 1981

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