Chrome Shrimps and Clams
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.
Artwork Details
- Title: Chrome Shrimps and Clams
- Artist: Robert Watts (American, Burlington, Iowa 1923–1988 Martins Creek, Pennsylvania)
- Date: 1963–64
- Medium: Chrome and glazed ceramic
- Dimensions: 1 1/4 × 10 1/4 × 6 3/4 in. (3.2 × 26 × 17.1 cm)
2.6 lb. (1.2 kg) - Classification: Sculpture
- Credit Line: Purchase, Bequest of Gioconda King, by exchange, 2018
- Object Number: 2018.153a–m
- Rights and Reproduction: © Robert Watts Estate, Larry Miller and Sara Seagull, 2018
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art
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