Signature 1990  Front view
wood, glass, paint, fabric, plexiglas, metal, oil/panel 
78” x 76” x 42”
Collection Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
Photo: Peter MacCallum

 

 

© Renée Van Halm

These works comment on the attendant structures surrounding art, including the life of the artist, for instance the signature and the studio. A cult has grown up around the lives of dead artists, the artist often championed as celebrity, as hero. This work comments on how these all have and continue to used by the historian, the patron and the viewer to endow work of art with meaning and allow them to be better understood and appreciated and how artists themselves contribute to the creation of this myth.

 

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Signature

< Signature employs a stylized display case or piece of furniture to contextualize images of Georges Braque in his studio. There is an anonymous signature on the glass.  This work presents segments of this image, the artist in his studio, on the front and again on the inside/back of the piece making it impossible for the viewer to see the complete image at any one time.