Label Text:
Excerpt from wall label “What Is Love: Selections from the Permanent Collection,” April 19 – June 3, 2007:
Synthesizing a range of influences including comics, Pop art, and psychedelic art, Peter Saul’s Clock, 5¢ confronts the viewer with a disarray of visual information. For example a tree stump with five cent stamps stands next to a heart-shaped box decorated with images of airplanes on its lid, containing cigarette butts inside. A woman opens the box, and behind her stands a house with a heart-shaped window, while a black, not yellow, sun appears to rise. While a heart can convey love, here it is complicated by the woman’s frown, the planes, and the cigarette butts. A heart with an arrow bounces on a spring off the box, while a clock with numbers up to 16 in a nontraditional order reads 2 o’clock as it runs towards the woman. Time still moves forward even while it is confused. The white foot-like shape and the cigarette butts suggests love is a kick in the “butt” in the end, and that time has run out. While Saul may be proposing that promises of love can be an illusion, he may also be proposing that promises of love can be an illusion, he may also be commenting on the social and political turmoil of the 1960s. - Julie Thomson, (M.A. '07)
Tags:
women; love; time; hearts Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=UM+1966.80 |
