Sold Out: Good Business is the Best Art

Sold Out will propose a radical re-reading of Pop Art and its legacy. Going beyond ‘Pop’ as a style, the exhibition will foreground the ways in which certain key artists, since the 1980s, have created their own ‘brands’, engaged in self-promotion and co-opted marketing strategies. Among the artists represented will be Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Richard Prince, David Hammons, Martin Kippenberger and Damien Hirst. Where most art-historical accounts have focused on the iconic and stylistic aspects of Pop Art, Sold Out will propose that the most radical lessons of the movement have emerged in the way artists in our time have not simply represented or commented upon our culture of mass media but have flagrantly participated in commercialism and infiltrated the publicity machine as a performative strategy. Tate Modern