2011.25.3
Image Plate 3 from White Modernism (Ludvika Smrcková, Czechoslovakia, 1967)
Artists
Josiah McElheny
(Boston, MA, 1966 - );
Ludvíka Smrcková
(1903 - 1990, Prague, Czech Republic)
Title
Image Plate 3 from White Modernism (Ludvika Smrcková, Czechoslovakia, 1967)
Creation Date
2008
Century
early 21st century
Dimensions
17 1/2 in. x 14 in. (44.45 cm x 35.56 cm)
Object Type
print
Creation Place
North America, United States
Medium and Support
Silkscreen and aquatint etching on Somerset Satin and Surface Gampi
Credit Line
Museum Purchase, Barbara Cooney Porter Fund
Copyright
This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s
Copyright Terms and Conditions.
Accession Number
2011.25.3
“My basic feeling about life is that things are not always what they seem. They are not always as they appear. Or even that things are not always as they are. And I think you can apply that to art, to people, to social structures, to an understanding of the world.” A sculptor renowned for his innovative works in glass and installation art, Josiah McElheny confronts notions of purity, transparency, and repetition within the larger issues of history, modernism, and utopia. Ideas of purity—and the moral code it implies—were essential to the ethos of modern architecture and design that emerged in the early twentieth century. White Modernism is a rare print series depicting the silhouettes of period glassware from Europe, a selection of which is on view here. Executed in white ink on handmade paper, the prints are seductively graphic as they vanish into a field of white. Their perceptual instability, which resembles that of the artist’s work in mirrored glass, visualizes McElheny’s belief in the dual nature of modernity: its alluring “perfection” and its terrifying obliteration of difference.
