id: 158986
accession number: 1995.204.12
share license status: Copyrighted
url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1995.204.12
updated: 2024-03-26 02:00:27.971000
"In a Dream...": Feast of Fools (Mexico City), 1990. Joel-Peter Witkin (American, 1939-). Photogravure; image: 27.9 x 34 cm (11 x 13 3/8 in.); paper: 50.4 x 60.3 cm (19 13/16 x 23 3/4 in.); matted: 55.9 x 66 cm (22 x 26 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Anonymous Donor and Photographers + Friends United Against AIDS 1995.204.12 © 1990 Joel-Peter Witkin
title: Feast of Fools (Mexico City)
title in original language:
series: "In a Dream..."
series in original language:
creation date: 1990
creation date earliest: 1990
creation date latest: 1990
current location:
creditline: Anonymous Donor and Photographers + Friends United Against AIDS
copyright: © 1990 Joel-Peter Witkin
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culture: America, 20th century
technique: photogravure
department: Photography
collection: PH - Photogravure
type: Portfolio
find spot:
catalogue raisonne:
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CREATORS
* Joel-Peter Witkin (American, 1939-) - artist
Joel-Peter Witkin American, 1939- According to Joel-Peter Witkin, his provocative, often horrific imagery "reflects the insanity of life." Drawing from his Catholic upbringing, paragons of Western art, the history of photography, and his own life experience, Witkin uses iconography, including physically abnormal persons, those with nonstandard sexual persuasions, and remains of corpses posed in disturbing tableaux, that is at once beautiful and demonic, perverse and profound. While many of his subjects represent the deepest, and often ugliest, aspects of human nature, he realizes "a form of beauty" in everything. Beneath their sumptuous surfaces, printed to technical perfection, Witkin's photographs touch on taboos that are at times little more than curiosities; at others, unavoidably seductive. "Art to me," he says of the process, "is a condition of being, of spirit, that is presented so strongly and convincingly that it's held together by an ethos of physicality." Witkin (born in New York City) served as a combat photographer for the U.S. Army from 1961-64. He attended Cooper Union in New York (B.F.A. in sculpture, 1974) and the University of New Mexico (M.F.A. in photography, 1986). He has received grants from the New York Creative Artists Public Service (1974), the Ford Foundation (1977), the National Endowment for the Arts (1981, 1986, 1992), Art Matters (1986), and the Chevalier des arts et des lettres (1990). His work has been shown in one-person exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1985), the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago (1986), the Kunstverein, Frankfurt (1988), the Museum of Modern Art, Haifa (1991), and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1996). He lives in Albuquerque. A.W.
* Portfolio II published by Photographers + Friends United Against AIDS - publisher
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measurements: Image: 27.9 x 34 cm (11 x 13 3/8 in.); Paper: 50.4 x 60.3 cm (19 13/16 x 23 3/4 in.); Matted: 55.9 x 66 cm (22 x 26 in.)
state of the work:
edition of the work:
support materials:
inscriptions:
inscription: Written in pencil on verso: "© 'Feast of Fools' 1990 11/25 Witkin [signed]"
translation:
remark:
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CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
title: Trophies of the Hunt: Capturing Nature as Art
opening date: 2004-07-24T00:00:00
Trophies of the Hunt: Capturing Nature as Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 24-November 3, 2004).
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LEGACY EXHIBITIONS
* {'description': 'Cleveland, Ohio: The Cleveland Museum of Art; 7/24/04 - 11/3/04. "Trophies of the Hunt: Capturing Nature as Art". No exhibition catalogue.', 'opening_date': '2004-07-24T00:00:00'}
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PROVENANCE
Anonymous Donor
date:
footnotes:
citations:
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
date: December 4, 1995
footnotes:
citations:
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wall description:
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RELATED WORKS
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CITATIONS
Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.
page number: Reproduced: P. 398
url:
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IMAGES