id:			156833
accession number:	1992.54
share license status:	Copyrighted
url:			https://clevelandart.org/art/1992.54
updated:		2025-02-09 04:54:11.880000

Brownie: Untitled (Sinking Houseboat), 1973. William Eggleston (American, 1939-). Chromogenic print (Ektacolor); image: 8.1 x 11.7 cm (3 3/16 x 4 5/8 in.); paper: 9.8 x 12.6 cm (3 7/8 x 4 15/16 in.); matted: 30.5 x 35.6 cm (12 x 14 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund 1992.54 © 1973 Eggleston Artistic Trust.  All rights reserved.  Used by permission.

title:				Untitled (Sinking Houseboat)
title in original language:	
series:				Brownie
series in original language:	
creation date:			1973
creation date earliest:		1973
creation date latest:		1973
current location:		
creditline:			John L. Severance Fund
copyright:			© 1973 Eggleston Artistic Trust.  All rights reserved.  Used by permission.

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culture:	America
technique:	Chromogenic print (Ektacolor)
department:	Photography
collection:	PH - American 1951-Present
type:		Photograph
find spot:	
catalogue raisonne: 

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CREATORS

* William Eggleston (American, 1939-)  - artist
William Eggleston American, 1939-

William Eggleston took a serious interest in photography when he discovered the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans while a student at Vanderbilt University in 1962. Like Cartier-Bresson, Eggleston's photographs rely heavily on ironic formal juxtapositions, with the added consideration of color. His work also depends on the banality of his subjects: the familiar people and places of his native Memphis and northern Mississippi. Like snapshots, his photographs are candid and commonplace, though they lack the snapshot's posed artifice and sentimental associations. Instead, Eggleston relies on straightforward documentation to effect a cool, often uncanny, distance between viewer and subject.
	Eggleston was among the first photographers to work regularly with new color technologies of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1967 he presented his work using color negative film to John Szarkowski, then director of the department of photographs at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Nine years later Szarkowski organized Eggleston's first solo exhibition at that museum, 75 dye transfer prints.
	In 1977 Caldecot Chubb, a close friend and supporter, published Eggleston's monograph Election Eve, which included work based on Alexander Gardner's Sketchbook of the Civil War. In 1978 Eggleston was invited to conduct research in color video at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His awards include fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (1974) and the National Endowment for the Arts (1975, 1978). He has photographed in Kenya (1980), Berlin, Salzburg, and Graz for his series Kiss Me Kracow (1983), Egypt (1986), England for the series English Rose (1988), the Transvaal (1989), and Spain (1990). He has also received commissions to shoot on location for John Huston's film Annie (1982), David Byrne's True Stories (1986), and throughout Elvis Presley's mansion, Graceland (1983). A major monograph, The Democratic Forest, was released in 1989, with an introduction by Eudora Welty. Eggleston also collaborated with writer Willie Morris on Faulkner's Mississippi, a book of photographs and accompanying text (1990). Eggleston lives in Memphis. A.W.
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measurements: Image: 8.1 x 11.7 cm (3 3/16 x 4 5/8 in.); Paper: 9.8 x 12.6 cm (3 7/8 x 4 15/16 in.); Matted: 30.5 x 35.6 cm (12 x 14 in.)
state of the work:	
edition of the work: 	believed to be a unique print

support materials:


inscriptions:

	inscription:	Written in black ink on verso: "William Eggleston [signed]"
	translation:	
	remark:		

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CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

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LEGACY EXHIBITIONS

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PROVENANCE

	Carole Thompson, Memphis, TN
	date: 
	footnotes: 	
	citations: 	


	(Laurence Miller Gallery, New York, NY)
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	The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
	date: February 24, 1992
	footnotes: 	
	citations: 	


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fun fact:


digital description:


wall description:

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RELATED WORKS

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CITATIONS

	Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1992.” <em>The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art</em> 80, no. 2 (February 1993): 38–79.
	page number: 	Mentioned: p. 68
	url:		http://www.jstor.org/stable/25161388

	Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. <em>Catalogue of Photography</em>. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.
	page number: 	Reproduced: P. 145
	url:		

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IMAGES