Somewhere in middle of the last century, house paint and the color charts used to market them were embraced by artists who had begun to reject long-held theories about painting, including the artistic process of mixing pigments by hand. Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today, opening Sunday at New York's Museum of Modern Art, explores this seismic shift in the art world through 90 pieces by 44 artists, several of which were commissioned BY MoMA.

Influences such as Marcel Duchamp's readymades, the found object, consumer culture, and mass production abound here, with works that celebrate systems - both random and scientific - and utilitarianism. The show opens with the last painting created by Duchamp, in 1918, which features lozenge-shaped color blocks reminiscent of a manufacturer's paint catalog. At the center of the high-ceilinged gallery is a massive sculpture by Donald Judd, factory built and painted from his diagram for the placement of standardized enamel colors commonly available in Europe.

Installation views with work by Gerhard Richter (left), Richard Serra (middle) and Donald Judd (right). Photos: Peggy Roalf

Works by Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt and Jennifer Bartlett explore ways in which artists have taken a conceptual approach that rejected the stuff of painting, such as canvas and brushes, to create works that were produced entirely by assistants directly on the wall, or made in part by factory workers, then finished by the artist.

The show brings together an international crowd, including Blinky Palermo, who used fabric by the yard from a Dusseldorf department store to create dye-saturated paintings that were assembled on a sewing machine by the wife of his friend, Gerhard Richter. On the adjacent wall, Richter's Color Chart series of ten large panels replicates the appearance, proportions and colors of the Pratt and Lambert samples that can still be found in hardware stores.

Undermining prevailing theories about color was serious business among artists of the 1960s and '70s. Frank Stella, who said, "Straight out of the can; it can't get better than that," is represented by a 1962 grid painting executed in Benjamin Moore wall paint on raw canvas.

Sculptor Richard Serra, who was influenced by the colorist Josef Albers while a student at Yale University, made a film that takes a swipe at the often didactic use of Color-aid paper for teaching design theory at the time. Six portraits known as the "Marilyn Flavors" and two pieces that riff on the paint by numbers craze represent Andy Warhol's contribution to the assembly-line ethos of the time.

Among the site-specific pieces commissioned or re-executed for this exhibition are Damien Hirst's Spot Mural, done with gloss enamel house paint; Daniel Buren's striped vests worn by the museum's security guards; five sentences about color by Lawrence Weiner; and a multicolor floor installation in the lobby by Jim Lambie, made with glossy colored tape.

A series of public programs, including Conversations on Color, moderated by the exhibition's curator Ann Temkin, begins on March 13^th. A special website that will feature works in the exhibition and excerpts from the catalog, and videos, will be accessible on March 2 at www.moma.org.colorchart. Please visit MoMAs website for more information.