A bathing beauty stretched horizontally across the card, a sexualized yet perversely wholesome piece of cheesecake was captioned “death wish”, the name of the then-current revenge flick -a sprinkling of homegrown Thanatos over the machine-made Eros. As befit the era of Watergate, McMahon turned a vertical picture of the Capitol on its side and appended the word “loss” to its detumescent form. A dramatically costumed Chinese couple gazing intently at each other cryptically suggested another kind of private rebellion by saying, “We must develop a philosophy of out own.”…the eruption of inappropriate thoughts testified to the normally repressed condition that represented everyday life in a media-saturated culture. It is not surprising that Vito Acconci, whose artist’s persona depended on carefully calibrated acts of deranged transgression handled at a cool remove, especially appreciated these works. -Douglas Eklund THE PICTURES GENERATION 1974-1984 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM 2009 Yale University Press