House.
|
Title |
House. |
|
Creator |
Whiteread, Rachel (English sculptor, born 1963) |
|
Date |
1993 |
|
Cultural Context |
English
British
European |
|
Style/Period |
Conceptual
Minimal |
|
Subject |
Houses
Row houses
Symbols
Neighborhoods
Working class
Demolition |
|
Description |
"Rachel Whiteread's House revived a taste for outrage previously brought to the fore in Britain by the Tate Bricks saga. Before its completion in October 1993 it had attracted little press interest. In November of that year, however, a combination of Whiteread winning the Turner Prize and the decision by the Neighbourhood Councillors of Bow that the work should be demolished led to a massive dispute. Defenders of the work argued that an English taste for iconoclasm, dating back to the sacking of the monasteries, was being rekindled." (Caption, p.159); "In the 1990s Rachel Whiteread was to carry out a more overt reassessment of the Minimalist inheritance in very different terms. Her casts of the negative spaces surrounding objects with strong human associations such as baths or bathroom sinks had a precursor in one of Bruce Nauman's enigmatic sculptures, A Cast of the Space Under My Chair (1966-8). However, Whiteread pushed the emotive connotations of casting through myriad variations of material and color, registering the poignancy of the dialectic between presence and absence. Her remarkable House (1993) was cast from the inside of a house in Bow, London, from which the exterior was subsequently peeled away. The house had been the sole survivor of a line of Victorian terraced houses, slated for demolition, which symbolized the last vestiges of a working-class community now dispersed among housing schemes. Although it had never been envisaged as a permanent fixture, Whiteread's ghostly monument to the former dwelling spoke eloquently of the erasure of human and social memory and aroused mixed but intense public controversy before its removal by the local council." (Excerpt, p.157) |
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Location Depicted |
London (England)
England
Great Britain
United Kingdom |
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Technique |
Casting (process) |
|
Work Type |
Sculpture
Outdoor sculpture
Environmental art
Casts (sculpture) |
|
Source |
Hopkins, David. After Modern Art: 1945-2000. Oxford History of Art. Oxford; New York: Oxford UP, 2000. (p.[158], fig.81) |
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Rights |
Photograph reproduced in Hopkins courtesy: John Davies. |
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Digital Publisher |
University of Louisville Department of Fine Arts/Allen R. Hite Art Institute Visual Resources Center |
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Format |
image/jpeg |
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Digital File Name |
VRC 826-09.jpg |
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Rating |
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