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LOUISE LAWLER
BONE, 1997
black and white photogram, mat with text
image: 8.9 x 6.4 cm
edition 29/100 (MP# P-4)
image courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures Gallery, New York
ESTIMATE: $1000-1500
Louise Lawler (born 1947, Bronxville, New York) is a U.S. artist and photographer. Beginning in the late 1970s, Lawler's work has focused on the presentation and marketing of artwork and the value of art in the social sphere. Much of this work consists of photographs of artwork and the context in which it is viewed. Lawler's photographs include images of paintings hanging on the walls of a museum, art collector's opulent homes, or being viewed by spectators in galleries. Often associated with the Pictures Generation that includes Sherry Levine, Richard Prince, John Baldessari and Cindy Sherman among others, Lawler addresses the power inherent in the museum system to bestow aura and prestige upon objects, and as such her work has been seen as more pointedly political than her peers.
Bone lightheartedly draws on how an object’s value changes as a result of the context in which it is situated. Here Lawler’s photogram of a wishbone includes a small letterpress text under the image that reads: “eaten in 1994; some done in 1995; 100 printed in 1997”. The bone’s ephemeral—here unrequited—potential for wish-making is poignantly offset by its subsequent use in making an artwork, more pronounced as each image in the series is a unique photogram, a contact print made by exposing light on objects laid on photopaper.
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