HIT BY NEWS

Press Art from the Nobel Collection

The traditional "information industry" was disrupted entirely with the invention of affordable printing presses and paper in the nineteenth century. Books, newspapers, and magazines – previously produced in small numbers and an expensive privilege of the intellectual "happy few" – rapidly advanced into a popular, widespread social phenomenon. The publishing boom was paralleled by the growth of the advertisement industry, and newly invented professions – graphic designer, journalist, reporter, editor, photographer, printer, lithographer, etc. – were all involved in the production of a "second layer of reality" (Jean Baudrillard), printed on paper and delivered to coffee houses and the homes of the quickly growing middle class. As a direct reaction to these innovations in technology and communication, the visual arts began an impressive process of transformation. Because photography and the printing press began to dominate the fields of documentation and reporting – formerly the domain of the visual arts – the formal abstraction of reality consequently grew to be one of the most important topics in the arts. A further step in the fruitful and still ongoing dialogue between mass media and the arts included critical reflection on the media’s role as an instrument of propaganda during totalitarian political periods. The Dada movement, for example, was a direct answer to the "fake news" of the Nazis in the 1930s. And the Paris-based "Nouveaux réalistes" reacted with their "décollages" and "emballages" in a playful but contemplative way to the consumerism of the post-war era in Western Europe. The relationship between mass media and art created an intense dialogue and stunning results on both sides. For a short time – during the Bauhaus period – art and media collaborated: El Lissitzky, Max Bill, Wassily Kandinsky, and many others worked towards the utopia of a better world, using art and media as platform for their sociopolitical message.
In the 1960s a new approach revolutionised the visual arts, described as "opera aperta" by Italian philosopher Umberto Eco. Then feminism, gender studies, and postcolonial discourses shaped artworks later in the 1980s, and since the end of the Cold War and the reign of globalisation, a critical review of the media industry has become key to an artistic attitude. And with the impending demise of printed materials, a certain taste of melancholia is inherent in the arts.

All these eminent topics are present in the collection of Zurich-based Peter and Annette Nobel. They started to collect art in the 1980s, when Peter Nobel was working as a lawyer for a leading Swiss publishing house. Since then, the Nobels have been "hit by news", acquiring more than two thousand artworks focusing on the dialogue between art and the press.

Christoph Doswald, a prominent independent curator, has selected a wide range of artworks from the Nobel collection for an exhibition at DOX. HIT BY NEWS takes a lucid and critical look at the fascinating topic of a society that was, is, and will continue to be shaped by the media.

Artists:
Berenice Abbott, Jean Arp, Abdulaziz Ashour, Rudolf Ausleger, Nicolas Balcazar, John Baldessari, Matthew Barney, Monique Baumann, Hans Baumgartner, Bedri Baykam, Robert Beck, Stephen James Beer, Joseph Beuys, Beni Bischof, Anna Blume, Erwin Blumenfeld, Alighiero Boetti, Armand Boua, Margaret Bourke-White, Georges Braque, Brassaï, Olaf Breuning, Serge Brignoni, Paulo Bruscky, Daniele Buetti, Rudy Burckhardt, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Raymond Cauchetier, César, Christo, Anne-Lise Coste, Zhang Dali, Salvador Diaz, Robert Doisneau, Felix Droese, Wictor Dubrowin, François Dufrêne, Zavier Ellis, Elmgreen & Dragset, Klodin Erb, Walker Evans, Zhu Fadong, Matias Faldbakken, Urs Fischer, Sylvie Fleury, Joan Fontcuberta, Robert Frank, Theo Frey, Roger Fritz, Ryan Gander, Alberto Giacometti, Gilbert & George, Rob Gnant, David Goldblatt, Rafael Grassi, René Groebli, F. C. Gundlach, Özlem Günyol, Andreas Gursky, Trevor Guthrie, Raymond Hains, Richard Hamilton, Alex Hanimann, Lorraine Hellwig, Sabine Hertig, Thomas Hirschhorn, David Hockney, Candida Höfer, Hanspeter Hofmann, Dennis Hopper, Franz Hubmann, Georges Hugnet, Rolf Iseli, Alfredo Jaar, Matthew Day Jackson, Marcel Janco, Asger Jorn, Lev Yudin, William Kentridge, Martin Kippenberger, Jiří Kolář, Steivan Liun Könz, Willem de Kooning, Alberto Korda, Joseph Kosuth, Jannis Kounellis, Barbara Kruger, Mustafa Kunt, Le Corbusier, Fernand Léger, Zilla Leutenegger, Anton Litvin, Robert Longo, Jacques Lowe, Vera Lutter, Lutz & Guggisberg, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Kazimir Malevich, Christian Marclay, Paul Matthews, Josephine Meckseper, Bjarne Melgaard, Jorge Méndez Blake, Olaf Metzel, Nicole Michel, Joan Miró, Bill Moseley, Robert Motherwell, Daidō Moriyama, Stefan Moses, Bill Mosley, Gianni Motti, Claudia & Julia Müller, Vik Muniz,Antoni Muntadas, Albert Oehlen, Melik Ohanian, Roman Ondak, Reinhard Öhner, Nam June Paik, Sigmar Polke, Lisl Ponger, Richard Prince, Dmitri Prigov, Edward Quinn, Rashid Rana, Robert Rauschenberg, Man Ray, Gerhard Richter, Alexander Rodchenko, Jefim Rojak, Martha Rosler, Dieter Roth, Mimmo Rotella, Arthur Rothstein, Thomas Ruff, Allen Ruppersberg, Edward Ruscha, René Saint-Paul, Vittorio Santoro, David Shrigley, Jean-Frédéric Schnyder, Gotthard Schuh, Daniel Schwartz, Kurt Schwitters, Jana Seehusen, Roman Signer, Marcelo Silveira, Taryn Simon, Lucy Skaer, Josh Smith, Lucien Smith, Nikolai Sokolov, Jules Spinatsch, Will Stacey, Hans Staub, Edward Steichen, Lisl Steiner, Varvara Stepanova, Louis Stettner, Studio Naranjo, Superflex, Antoni Tàpies, Paul Thek, Jean Tinguely, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Saša Tkačenko, Gabi Trinkaus, Panos Tsagaris, Guela Tsouladze, Rosemarie Trockel, Hooper Turner, Günther Uecker, Tomi Ungerer, Bernar Venet, Jacques de la Villeglé, Wolf Vostell, Karl Waldmann, Kelley Walker, Wang Youshen, Andy Warhol, Charlie White, Johannes Wohnseifer, Zhang Xianyong, Rémy Zaugg