Floral Room

Artist John O'Reilly (American, 1930–2021)

Date1991

MediumPolaroid photomontage

Dimensionsimage: 9 × 29 cm (3 9/16 × 11 7/16 in.)
frame: 37 × 55 cm (14 9/16 × 21 5/8 in.)

ClassificationsCollages / Assemblages

Credit LineGift of John O'Reilly

Object number2018.24

Label TextShifting expressions of gender link many of O’Reilly’s photomontages from the 1990s. In Dutch Studio and Floral Room, O’Reilly affixes his head to the bare-breasted torsos of women from paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn and Paolo Veronese, respectively. The long-established genre of “the nude” becomes disrupted by O’Reilly’s addition of male genitalia sourced from vintage pornography magazines. O’Reilly’s montages offer a plurality of gender markers preventing the viewer from designating a distinct sex to his composite figures. Gender fluidity also appears in A French Birth as a male figure delivers a child. The source of the newborn in this montage is Nicolas Poussin’s 1638 painting The Finding of Moses.

On View

Not on view