Spring Break
BMA exhibit turns moldy food into art
Issue date: 12/4/08
In the Front Room of the Baltimore Museum of Art, one can peruse the collection of Dieter Roth and Rachel Harrison's works while listening to the background music of disembodied lips moaning which carries from an adjoining room.
The two artists on display in the Front Room have captured similar ideas in photographs, drawings and sculptures, which will be on display until January. Dieter Roth, a German artist born in 1930, and Rachel Harrison, an American artist born in 1966, are about as different as two individuals can be. Still, both portray similar themes within their artwork and are inspired by everyday life.
Roth, who grew up in the midst of the Second World War and spent much of his childhood in Switzerland with Jewish and communist artists and actors, is a true modern artist. His paintings, photographs and screen prints are inspired by everything - rotting food to postcards to sports.
As for Harrison, she is a New York City native who studied at Wesleyan University, and her artwork has been featured in New York, San Francisco, Glasgow, Norway, Toronto and other hot spots. Although she has obviously had some different experiences than Roth, she is also inspired by the ordinary, which is why the majority of her untitled works currently displayed at the Baltimore Museum of Art are items one can see every day.
Six of Dieter Roth's "96 Piccadillies" are among those works in the Front Room collection. These screen prints were not only inspired by a perfectly ordinary object (a postcard) but they are also painted over the original picture on the postcard. Each of the six emphasizes a different aspect of the picture of London's Piccadilly Circus.
The first looked as though all the buildings had been white-washed, the second had different colored dots on top of everything, the third was mostly yellow, the fourth was much darker than the first few, the fifth was bold and colorful and the final one was unrecognizable, all black except for three neon green double-decker buses.
The two artists on display in the Front Room have captured similar ideas in photographs, drawings and sculptures, which will be on display until January. Dieter Roth, a German artist born in 1930, and Rachel Harrison, an American artist born in 1966, are about as different as two individuals can be. Still, both portray similar themes within their artwork and are inspired by everyday life.
Roth, who grew up in the midst of the Second World War and spent much of his childhood in Switzerland with Jewish and communist artists and actors, is a true modern artist. His paintings, photographs and screen prints are inspired by everything - rotting food to postcards to sports.
As for Harrison, she is a New York City native who studied at Wesleyan University, and her artwork has been featured in New York, San Francisco, Glasgow, Norway, Toronto and other hot spots. Although she has obviously had some different experiences than Roth, she is also inspired by the ordinary, which is why the majority of her untitled works currently displayed at the Baltimore Museum of Art are items one can see every day.
Six of Dieter Roth's "96 Piccadillies" are among those works in the Front Room collection. These screen prints were not only inspired by a perfectly ordinary object (a postcard) but they are also painted over the original picture on the postcard. Each of the six emphasizes a different aspect of the picture of London's Piccadilly Circus.
The first looked as though all the buildings had been white-washed, the second had different colored dots on top of everything, the third was mostly yellow, the fourth was much darker than the first few, the fifth was bold and colorful and the final one was unrecognizable, all black except for three neon green double-decker buses.
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Linda Eaton
posted 3/07/09 @ 12:36 AM EST
Thank you for writing the article, I am very pleased with how it came out.
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