abc
Over the last two decades, Hamilton has used a wide range of media-from photography and video to installations and performance-to forge new pathways of communication and affect specific to the feminine experience, based in qualities of touch, materiality, and the body. While all of her work involves a rigorous questioning of the primacy of sight among the senses, it does so paradoxically through a nearly rapturous visual beauty: installations featuring glimmering beads of water or pink powder coursing down a white wall (the latter settling over the braille dots of a Charles Reznikoff poem), or candle wax dripping from the rafters of a hollowed-out rowhouse onto an empty ledger.
abc was shown opposite one of the artist's "weeping walls" at the 1999/2000 53rd Carnegie International, and shares the same ineffable poetry as these larger, more ephemeral works. In a 26-minute loop, a wetted fingertip slowly erases a backwards alphabet; the amoeba-like form then retraces its path, "writing" the sequence forwards and in correct order. "The camera is following a lens of water," Hamilton has said, "that is the point of contact between finger and glass-it acts as a magnifier." With exquisite economy of means and hypnotic simplicity, the artist compounds modes of visual apprehension (linguistic, photographic) in order to dissolve them into the untranslatable realm of touch. As a work whose beginning is an end and vice versa, abc is also a fitting first foray into the medium of video art at the Metropolitan Museum.
abc was shown opposite one of the artist's "weeping walls" at the 1999/2000 53rd Carnegie International, and shares the same ineffable poetry as these larger, more ephemeral works. In a 26-minute loop, a wetted fingertip slowly erases a backwards alphabet; the amoeba-like form then retraces its path, "writing" the sequence forwards and in correct order. "The camera is following a lens of water," Hamilton has said, "that is the point of contact between finger and glass-it acts as a magnifier." With exquisite economy of means and hypnotic simplicity, the artist compounds modes of visual apprehension (linguistic, photographic) in order to dissolve them into the untranslatable realm of touch. As a work whose beginning is an end and vice versa, abc is also a fitting first foray into the medium of video art at the Metropolitan Museum.
Artwork Details
- Title: abc
- Artist: Ann Hamilton (American, born 1956)
- Date: 1994
- Medium: Single-channel digital video, transferred from Beta tape, black-and-white, silent, 13 min.
- Classification: Variable Media
- Credit Line: Gift of Peter Norton Family Foundation, 2001
- Object Number: 2001.270
- Rights and Reproduction: © 1999 Ann Hamilton. Used by permission
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
More Artwork
A slider containing 5 items.
Press the down key to skip to the last item.
Press the down key to skip to the last item.
Sadie Benning
1990
David Hammons
1995/1999
Ilene Segalove
1974–78
William Wegman
1972–73
William Wegman
1974–75
Related Content
Publications
Books, guides, and catalogues published by The Met.
Research Resources
The Met provides unparalleled resources for research and welcomes an international community of students and scholars. The Met's Open Access API is where creators and researchers can connect to the The Met collection. Open Access data and public domain images are available for unrestricted commercial and noncommercial use without permission or fee.
To request images under copyright and other restrictions, please use this Image Request form.
Feedback
We continue to research and examine historical and cultural context for objects in The Met collection. If you have comments or questions about this object record, please complete and submit this form. The Museum looks forward to receiving your comments.