Robert Heinecken Waking Up In America Analysis

Robert Heinecken was an American artist whose art ranged from the 1960s to the 1990s. His work focused around this idea of picking apart the American society, revealing it’s imperfections and faults. As a result, his pieces always faced controversy. Many claimed his artwork was pornography, due to the large number of pieces he produced featuring nudity and sexual themes. Heinecken’s work was meant to be more than pornography, it was meant to reveal the true faults of American society.
His work was meant to criticize and until this very day people are still unraveling what each of his pieces mean and what they are actually criticizing. This can best be seen in his 1986 piece, “Waking Up in News America.” The piece critiques mass media and it’s role in modern society by criticizing the selectivity of mass media, in terms of what they report and who reports it.
There are four reporters present in the piece. The first three appear to be caucasian women and the final reporter appears to be Asian. Heinecken explains this in his video, provided byMoMA4.The video titled “HEINECKEN ON HEINECKEN” is a 45 minute long discussion led by Heinecken himself, explaining a select group of his work. He claims he did not remember who the Asian reporter was, but the first three reporters are Diane Sawyer, Joan Lunden, and Jane Pauley.
Further research in James Hugunin’s apocryphal dialogue about “Waking Up in News America”,5the final reporter is identified as Connie Chung. Further research regarding these four reporters reveal that all the women were in the morning news during the 1980s, hinting at their particular role in society during that time. All four women are still active, in a direct or indirect way, in news