Infinite Landscape #6
Artist
Paul Vinet
(French, active United States, born 1969)
Date2008
Mediumarchival pigment print with gold leaf and varnish
Dimensionsimage: 94 × 76.2 cm (37 × 30 in.)
sheet: 101.6 × 83.8 cm (40 × 33 in.)
sheet: 101.6 × 83.8 cm (40 × 33 in.)
ClassificationsPhotographs
Credit LineGift of the Artist
Object number2023.17
Label TextA universal sign of wealth and prestige, gold also remains a potent symbol of the sacred. Vinet’s photographs elevate ordinary locations using gold leaf, a material often found in late Byzantine and Renaissance paintings. In the 14th and 15th centuries, Italian artists applied thin sheets of gold to Christian depictions of the Holy Family using a technique known as gilding. One example is Worcester’s 15th-century painting Madonna of Humility attributed to Zanobi de Benedetto Strozzi (1412-68).
Vinet uses the same visual vocabulary of gold-ground religious paintings to signal the divine in those we encounter daily. Here, nearly all identifiers of the landscape have been gilded, save for a tree and some posts. He explains, “Infinite Landscape speaks to the idea of 'presence,' specifically the religious concept that God is everywhere…In these photos, people seem to float in this space that can be viewed alternatively as divine, alienating, timeless, or without perspective.”On View
Not on view
