Palimpsest Five
Artist
Tad Beck
(American, born 1968)
Date2009
Mediumfacemounted lightjet print
Dimensions106.7 × 106.7 cm (42 × 42 in.)
ClassificationsPhotographs
Credit LineGift of the Artist
Object number2015.38.2
Label TextTad Beck’s work consistently engages with the language of the body, often creating collisions between the history of art, gender, and sexuality.
In his Palimpsest series, Beck appropriates a group of photographs taken by the circle of nineteenth-century artist Thomas Eakins. Originally used as reference material for Eakins’ paintings, Beck restaged these photographs using his own circle of models. Later, Beck digitally inserted his models alongside those originally photographed by Eakins—obscuring the boundaries between art of the past and present. Housed in virtual Victorian repoussé frames, Beck creates an anachronistic, dissonant view of the body and its place in history.
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