Postcard
Lawler makes pictures of other pictures, revealing the usually invisible mechanisms of possession, display, and circulation that make the art world run. In this example, she shows the fortuitous encounter between an Eric Fischl painting of nudists and an iconic Jeff Koons sculpture of floating basketballs in a tank, brought together at a Christie's preview. With characteristic wit, the artist collapses the two strains of 1980s art previously thought to be antithetical-the glossy cynicism of Koons' commodity-objects and the earnest neo-expressionist painting of Fischl-into a single image. Huddled together in the waiting room-like space of the auction house, her subjects emit surprising similarities (the curves of basketballs, breasts, and buttocks) and gain pathos as they await the next stop in their provenance.
Artwork Details
- Title: Postcard
- Artist: Louise Lawler (American, born Bronxville, New York, 1947)
- Date: 2000
- Medium: Silver dye bleach print
- Dimensions: 109.2 x 157.5cm (43 x 62in.)
Frame: 124.5 × 172.7 cm (49 × 68 in.) - Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel and Anonymous Gift, 2001
- Object Number: 2001.458
- Rights and Reproduction: © Louise A. Lawler
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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