Vivid Lines exhibit at Krannert Art Museum. Photo by Ross Topol.

The summer exhibition “Vivid Lines in Graphic Times” at the Krannert Art Museum showcases a variety of more recent images from the museum’s permanent collection, with works dating from the 1970s to the late 1990s. The selection of different images unifies in the graphic quality that all the images share, displaying a variety of works that utilize various graphic methods from lithography and etching to woodblocks and silkscreen. Many of the works in “Vivid Lines in Graphic Times” draw from the Pop Art movement, including works by Barbara Kruger, Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, Tom Wesselmann, Alex Katz and David Salle.

Much in contrast to abstraction in art, Pop Art often presents images that we are familiar with, but the images are presented in unusual (and thus more thought-provoking) ways. The untitled work by Barbara Kruger on display, for instance, pairs an oversized black and white photographic image of water pouring into the blade of a knife. The text on the four by six feet image (in a font that might call to mind a magazine advertisement) reads “You rule by pathetic display.” If observers look closely, they can see the small Ben-day dots (as in comic books), evocative of the graphic context of the image’s suggestion that certain attempts at parading one’s power actually appear unimpressive.

Andy Warhol’s "Marilyn" and John Clem Clarke’s "Untitled" present graphic renderings of figures that have become mythical archetypes in their respective cultures. John Clem Clarke’s work, for instance, calls back to Hyacinthe Rigaud’s famous 1701 painting of Louis XIV. In Clarke’s work, however, the traditionally glorified image of the king is distorted by a dithered effect of red, yellow, blue and black dots. In "Marilyn," the image of Marilyn’s face is conspicuously unreal and yet consequently even more eye-catching in its vivid turquoise, orange and violet coloring.

Although approaching the subject matter in different ways, both Vernon Fisher and David Wojnarowicz provoke interesting commentaries on political power through visual representations of ruptures in the world; in Wojnarowicz’s "Earth and Wind," the earth seems to have burst open, revealing brain mass, while in Fisher’s "Man Cutting Globe" a father proudly shows his son that a globe can be carved up like a pumpkin.

David Salle’s work makes remarkable use of layering combined media, incorporating etching, aquatint and photography. In "Canfield Hatfield 9," the right side of the image more prominently displays a bright yellow and orange sketch of a woman holding a poseable figure mannequin upside down with its legs in the air; behind this image is a faded rendering of two figures sitting by a window. The brightness of the right side contrasts with the sepia-toned photograph on the left, which reveals a woman sitting with her elbows on her knees. Dark drips run down the image vertically. In the center of "Canfield Hatfield 9" is a tiny printed page from a book with watery blue spots painted upon it. Through this intriguing gesture and reference to a book by Willem de Kooning, the observer has the opportunity to read the image both visually and literally, and judge for one’s self the significance of the conception of, as the page reads, “content” itself as “a glimpse.”