Andy Warhol dis­solved the boun­daries be­tween art and com­merce with his works and in the pro­cess harkened back to ev­ery­day mo­tifs from the world of con­sump­tion. In 1962 he be­gan his por­trait se­ries of fa­mous per­so­n­al­i­ties, to which the work Dou­ble Elvis al­so be­longs. As source ma­te­rial he used a mo­tif from the 1960 west­ern Flam­ing Star, in which Elvis plays a cow­boy. Warhol’s por­trait de­picts an in­ap­proach­able hero from the world of com­merce who, with the aid of the sil­ver back­ground, is el­e­vat­ed to an icon. The lus­trous ma­te­rial, how­ev­er, is not a pre­cious me­t­al but an im­i­ta­tion—an al­lu­sion to su­per­fi­cial­i­ty and the gla­m­orous ap­pear­ance of Hol­ly­wood.

In 1955 Jack­son Pol­lock be­gan de­vel­op­ing a vi­g­or­ous, spon­ta­neous paint­ing tech­nique called Ac­tion Paint­ing. He laid the can­vas on the ground, cir­cled around it, and drib­bled and splashed the paint on­to the pic­ture’s sur­face. The re­sult was a dense tan­gle of lines that filled the sur­face like an un­der­growth. Th­ese paint­in­gs have nei­ther a be­gin­n­ing nor an end; with­out a fo­cal point, the strains of paint cov­er the en­tire pic­ture. Black and White No.15 com­bines ab­s­tract trails of paint with hints of fig­u­ra­tion. A face or a mask emerges here and there be­tween the black strains of paint, on­ly to dis­ap­pear again in a jum­ble of lines. Pol­lock, who strived to at­tain a trance-like state while paint­ing, ex­plained: “When you're work­ing out of your un­con­s­cious, fig­ures are bound to emerge.”

What ini­tial­ly ap­pears to be a shap­shot or a film still is, in re­al­i­ty, care­ful­ly orch­es­trat­ed. The ar­range­ment of the light, col­or, and de­tails is part of the com­po­si­tion. Jeff Wall worked on the im­age for sev­er­al months; it is not by chance that he is called the “paint­ing pho­to­g­ra­pher.” It is the un­spec­tac­u­lar that makes his im­ages spec­tac­u­lar: the ca­su­al mo­ment, the small ges­tures and fleet­ing glances. Un­der­s­cored by the ti­tle Wo­m­an and Her Doc­tor, am­bigu­ous in­tel­lec­tu­al games im­pose them­selves on the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two fig­ure­s—Wall’s work nar­rates a sto­ry whose out­come on­ly the view­er knows. Wall be­longs to the artists of the Van­cou­ver school, a group of artists who in the 1980s in­vesti­gat­ed the ar­tis­tic and so­cial ef­fects of pho­tog­ra­phy.

At­tract­ing at­ten­tion any cost was Martin Kip­pen­berg­er’s ar­tis­tic strat­e­gy. With irony, pro­vo­ca­tion, and wit he chal­lenged so­cial norms and sat­i­rized politics and the art scene. As such, in the midst of the Cold War, he paint­ed this work, which he cheek­i­ly ti­tled The Sym­pa­thet­ic Com­mu­nist. It de­picts the por­trait of a wo­m­an wear­ing a black cap with a red star—a Bud­jonov­ka, the typ­i­cal hat worn by the So­vi­et Army. Al­though Kip­pen­berg­er, as a West­ern artist, in­dulged in com­plete ar­tis­tic free­dom, he provo­ca­tive­ly paint­ed pre­cise­ly the sort of paint­ing that So­vi­et state au­thor­i­ties from would have de­mand­ed from East­ern Bloc artists.

At the age of for­ty-six Mark Rothko broke with rep­re­sen­ta­tio­n­al paint­ing and turned to ab­s­trac­tion. From 1950 on he paint­ed float­ing, monochrome planes fo­cused sole­ly on the im­pact of col­or. Along with Bar­nett New­man he is one of the lead­ing ex­po­nents of Col­or Field Paint­ing of the 1950s. In this paint­ing two rec­tan­gles are ar­ranged par­al­lel to one another on a blue back­ground. Through their blurred and hazy con­tours the forms seem to float in a blue space and to al­most dis­ap­pear in it. As such, the dis­so­lu­tion of the chro­mat­ic struc­ture cre­ates a med­i­ta­tive, su­per­na­t­u­ral ef­fect.

Ed­ward Kien­holz was in­spired for this work by the res­to­ra­tion of the is­land of Iwo Ji­ma, which the US had seized in 1946, to Ja­pan in 1968. The mo­tif of the group of soldiers de­rived from a prize-win­n­ing press pho­to that a jour­nal­ist had shot af­ter the cap­ture of the is­land. Al­though the pho­to was posed, the mo­tif was used for pos­tage stamps, posters, and a fa­mous war me­mo­rial near Wash­ing­ton DC. Me­t­al han­dles on the plate on which Kien­holz’s group of head­less soldiers stands re­fer to the ti­tle: The Portable War Me­mo­rial. With it, me­mo­rials ap­pear just as exchange­able as the 475 na­tions, drawn on the chalk­board, that once ex­ist­ed around the world. Wars have re­drawn the bor­ders. On the far left, the wo­m­an in a bar­rel rep­re­sents the pop singer Kate Smith, who be­came fa­mous in 1938 with her ren­di­tion of “God Bless Amer­i­ca.” Next to her hangs the mo­bi­l­iza­tion poster with Un­cle Sam, which was used to re­cruit soldiers in 1917. On the right, ev­ery­day life cont­in­ues as usu­al, just a small, burned Tarzan at the very bot­tom of the right grave­s­tone re­calls the nu­clear threat over­sha­d­ow­ing the dai­ly rou­tine.