Chrome Shrimps and Clams belongs to a series of sculptures by Watts from the 1960s in which chrome-plated casts of objects take center stage. Here nine shiny clam shells and three dazzling shrimp are displayed on an ordinary ceramic dish of the type found in a diner. Made at a moment when consumerism was under debate in the art world and in the world at large, Watts’s work is intended as a critical yet humorous meditation on the notions of appetite and consumption. Taking a page out of advertising’s playbook, moreover, it also confuses the distinction between the original and the copy, the organic and the inorganic.
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the artist (until d. 1988; his estate, New Paltz, N. Y., 1988–2018; sold to MMA)
New York. Leo Castelli Gallery. "Introducing Artschwager, Christo, Hay, Watts," May 2–June 3, 1964, no catalogue.
New York. Leo Castelli Gallery. "Robert Watts," November 27–December 20, 1990, unnumbered cat. (p. 10; as "Shrimp and Clams," 1964).
Newark Museum. "Off Limits: Rutgers University and the Avant-Garde, 1957–1963," February 18–May 16, 1999, not in catalogue [withdrawn early for Exh. Kassel 1999?].
Kassel. Museum Fridericianum. "Robert Watts: The Invisible Man of Fluxus and Pop," April 24–July 18, 1999, not in catalogue.
New York. Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University. "Experiments in the Everyday: Allan Kaprow and Robert Watts—Events, Objects, Documents," October 6–December 11, 1999, no. 50 (as "Chrome Shrimp and Clams," lent by the Robert Watts Studio Archive).
Cambrdige, Mass. MIT List Visual Arts Center. "Experiments in the Everyday: Allan Kaprow and Robert Watts—Events, Objects, Documents," April 27–July 2, 2000, no. 50.
Paris. Centre Pompidou, Galerie 1. "Les années pop: 1956–1968," March 15–June 18, 2001, unnumbered cat. (fig. 64.55; lent by the Robert Watts Studio Archives, Larry Miller and Sara Seagull, New York).
Robert Watts (American, Burlington, Iowa 1923–1988 Martins Creek, Pennsylvania)
1967
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