Hay
Artist
Annette Lemieux
(American, born 1957)
Date2008
Mediumacrylic silkscreen ink on wood box
Dimensions45.7 x 91.4 x 35.6 cm (18 x 36 x 14 in.)
ClassificationsSculpture
Credit LineStoddard Acquisition Fund
Object number2010.23
Label TextOver the past three decades, Annette Lemieux has achieved a unique hybridization of pop cultural material, minimalist form, and a conceptual approach to object making. Always interested in the connections between images and the world in which they exist, Lemieux typically chooses materials that have a history and universal recognition yet resist precise readings of time and place. In her photographically rendered bale of hay (incorporating an image she found on the internet), Lemieux’s symbol of rural Americana is filtered through the geometric form of minimalist sculpture. Although her belief in materials as a form of social engagement is indebted to the practice of Joseph Beuys, the ultimate prototype for the silkscreened surface and rectangular format of Hay can be found in Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes. But there are subtle generational differences. While Warhol’s mimicking of factory-based production in the 1960s challenged the value of the handmade over the mass-produced, Lemieux’s recent use of an image from the farm acknowledges what is often lost in the name of progress.
ProvenanceThe artist; Barbara Krakow Gallery, Boston, MAOn View
Not on view
