The Raft of the Medusa / Le Radeau de la Meduse
Mannedorf, Switzerland: Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, 2012. Edition of 500 printed. Hardcover. Black cloth/boards. Pale green metallic lettering. 40 pp. with color images throughout. VG+ but for small stamp on title page from art museum reference library. No other marks. Item #160288
ISBN: 9783905173512
The Raft of the Medusa / Le Radeau de la Méduse is a series within the larger body of the Bruce High Quality Foundation’s work, “History Paintings.” These works recast early photographs made by the Foundation – images created through a highly unstructured, playful, collaborative model – through a Warholian factory model of gridded silkscreen on hand painted color fields. Raft of the Medusa is a 2004 photograph by the Foundation depicting a group of young anonymous artists on a makeshift raft in the East River. Either setting sail to Manhattan or landing in Brooklyn, the image, according to critic Maxwell Heller, “revel(s) in that moment on the limns,” when the Foundation was first gaining recognition. Le Radeau de la Méduse is an 1818 - 1819 painting by Théodore Géricault depicting the abandoned survivors of the wreck of the naval frigate Méduse. At the top right of the painting is the distant brig Argus, which would eventually save fifteen passengers. But on the left hand side of the canvas a wave threatens to end it all. Géricault’s timely political theme and bold depiction of death earned him wide recognition. In this new series, these two images have been converted into silkscreens and sequenced in an alternating pattern. The Foundation thus collapses several models of collaborative practice: the survivalist anarchism of the original raft, the playful anarchism of their own practice, and the ironic factory of Warhol. Catalogue from the exhibition of Friday, September 21, 2012–Saturday, October 27, 2012. The Bruce High Quality Foundation, an anonymous Brooklyn-based collective who named themselves after a fictional artist who perished on 9/11, have a particular talent for humor, referencing other artworks and strangely evocative juxtapositions of images, not to mention laughing at the art world generally.
OCLC: 897386693
Price: $175.00