| Maker(s): | Hammond, Jane
| | Culture: | American (1950- )
| | Title: | Four Ways to Blue
| | Date Made: | 2006
| | Type: | Collage
| | Materials: | Hand-cut digital print with gouache, acrylic, and horsehair over laser-cut Japanese paper over handmade Japanese printed paper
| | Place Made: | New York, NY
| | Measurements: | Frame: 13 9/16 in x 15 9/16 in; 34.4 cm x 39.5 cm; Sheet/Image: 10 3/4 in x 12 3/4 in; 27.3 cm x 32.4 cm
| | Narrative Inscription: | INSCRIPTION: recto, center (cut from paper and laid on second patterned sheet): First, the hope of capturing -or the actual capturing- of the first specimen of a species unknown to science: this is the dream at the back of every llepieopterist's mind, whether he be climbing a mountain in New Guinea or crossing a bog in Maine. Secondly, there is a capture of a rare or very local butterfly - things you have gloated over in books, in obscure scientific reviews, on the splendid plates of famous works, and that you now see on the wing, in their natural surroundings, among plants and minerals that acquire a mysterious magic through the intimate association with the rarities they produce and support, so that a given landscape lives twice. as a delightful wilderness in its own right and as the haunt of a certain butterfly or moth. Thirdly, there is the naturalist's interest in disentangling the life histories of little known insects, in learning about their habits and structure, and in detecting their position in the scheme of classification- a scheme which can be sometimes pleasurably exploded in a dazzling display of polemical fireworks whic a new discovery upsets the old scheme and confounds its obtuse champions. And fourthly, one should not ignore the element of sport and luck, of brisk motion and robust achiemvement, of an ardent and arduous quest ending in the silky triangle of a folded butterfly lying in the palm of one's hand.
| | Accession Number: | MH 2011.2
| | Credit Line: | Gift of Jock Reynolds and Suzanne Hellmuth in honor of her mother Jean Adele Dieffenbach Hellmuth (Class of 1942)
| | Museum Collection: | Mount Holyoke College Art Museum
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Description:
A butterfly sits on top of text cut out from a white sheet laid on top another sheet of paper printed in a blue, white, yellow and red design within a shadow box. The butterfly is black and blue with irises in its wings.
Label Text:
From the exhibtion Jane Hammond, Digital and Analog, February 1 - May 29, 2022
A black and blue butterfly hovers over a backdrop of words. Throughout her career, Hammond has incorporated butterflies into her art, often in multiples. In this poetic work, however, she has opted to highlight a single one. This uncharacteristic approach of using only one butterfly, as well as its quiet stasis, stems from the personal origins of this work. It is an 80th-birthday tribute to her friend Wynn Kramarsky (1926–2019), an internationally revered art collector and philanthropist.
Hammond connects her butterfly fascination with 20th-century Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov (author of Lolita), who was also fascinated by butterflies. The text that forms the background of the piece is excerpted from an interview with Nabokov, in which he discusses four specific pleasures of collecting butterflies, from capturing a specimen of an unknown species to enjoying the luck of a butterfly landing in the palm of one’s hand.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=MH+2011.2 |
