From December 4 through 7, 2014, Dominique Lévy will present the exhibition TRUE GRIT at Art Basel Miami Beach. With significant works created from the 1970s through the 1990s, the show is inspired by the potent themes that transformed Charles Portis' 1968 novel True Grit - and the 1969 Academy Award-winning film based upon it - into bona fide milestones of American popular culture celebrated worldwide. The exhibition includes painting, sculpture, and photography by Alberto Burri, Enrico Castellani, Gilbert & George, David Hammons, Keith Haring, Barbara Kruger, Sigmar Polke, Richard Prince, Peter Regli, Thomas Schütte, Kazuo Shiraga, Richard Serra, Frank Stella, Günther Uecker, Andy Warhol, and Christopher Wool.
The original story of Portis' True Grit is told from the perspective of an Arkansas woman named Mattie Ross, who recounts the time when she was 14 years old and in search of retribution for the murder of her father by a scoundrel named Tom Chaney. She is aided in her quest by the tough U.S. marshal Rooster Cogburn and a young Texas Ranger called LeBoeuf, unlikely cohorts who nevertheless share with Mattie a single defining trait: "grit." Literally a collection of small, hard, abrasive materials such as dirt, ground stone, debris, and the coarse surface of sandpaper, "grit" is also a marked steeliness of character - a mixture of determination, fearlessness invincible spirit, and willingness to be society's outsider for the sake of a goal. TRUE GRIT at Art Basel Miami Beach focuses on interrelated thematic threads harkening back to both definitions of the word "grit", to unrefined materials and the archetype of the outsider. In a strictly black, white, and red color palette, the works on view have evolved specifically from artistic attitudes of true grit - unwavering consistency, fearlessness, and the willingness to tread untested turf conceptually and materially.Videos