Sanford Biggers (American, born 1970). <em>Blossom</em>, 2007. Steel, plastic and synthetic fibers, wood, MIDI player piano system, Zoopoxy, pigment, soil, modelling clay, polyurethane foam, 12 x 18 x 15 feet (365.9 x 548.8 x 457.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Purchase gift of Toby Devan Lewis, Charles and Amber Patton, and an anonymous donor, gift of the Contemporary Art Council, and the Mary Smith Dorward Fund, 2011.10. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, DIG_E_2017_The_Legacy_of_Lynching_2011.10_view01_PS11.jpg)

Sanford Biggers (American, born 1970). Blossom, 2007. Steel, plastic and synthetic fibers, wood, MIDI player piano system, Zoopoxy, pigment, soil, modelling clay, polyurethane foam, 12 x 18 x 15 feet (365.9 x 548.8 x 457.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Purchase gift of Toby Devan Lewis, Charles and Amber Patton, and an anonymous donor, gift of the Contemporary Art Council, and the Mary Smith Dorward Fund, 2011.10. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, DIG_E_2017_The_Legacy_of_Lynching_2011.10_view01_PS11.jpg)

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How is this playing by itself?

Great question! The work uses as MIDI player piano system which allows the keys to move and the music you hear comes from a recording. It's a song titled "Strange Fruit," popularized in the 1930s by the jazz vocalist Billie Holiday.The arrangement of the song twas done by the artist himself (Sanford Biggers). It laments and protests the lynching of African-Americans.

Is this tree real?

No, the tree is not real, although it does incorporate real wood over a steel infrastructure.

Other materials like polyuerthane foam and clay were also used in this sculpture.

What is the inspiration of this art?

That piece is about racial lynching. I am not sure if the piece is playing its sound right now, but the piano plays the song "Strange Fruit" (in an arrangement by Biggers). Popularized in the 1930s by Billie Holiday, this song protests the atrocity of lynching: "Southern trees bear a strange fruit, / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, / Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze, / Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees." In these lyrics, the "strange fruit" produced on Southern trees is the dead bodies of lynched men.

The artist made the piece after the 2006 incident in Jena, Louisiana, in which nooses were dangled from a tree at a racially troubled high school.

The artist also talks about the importance of the symbolism of trees. The bodhi tree under which the Buddha found enlightenment, family trees, trees of knowledge, and trees as sites of lynching -- there are many layers of meaning here.

How often do you tune the piano?

I wish I had a piano pun at the ready!! I don't know how often the piano is tuned, in truth. The piano is operated via a midi player and plays two arrangements of "Strange Fruit" every 26 minutes. I believe the artist tuned the piano to the liking before it was installed.

So is it the piano making the music or a recording?

The music you are hearing from "Blossom" comes from a recording arranged by the artist himself.

Tell me more.

I love this piece! "Blossom," by Sanford Biggers, is a sculptural and sound based installation that incorporates many of the themes the artist favors in his work, including black history and identity in the United States and buddhism. The piano plays Biggers' own arrangement of "Strange Fruit" every 15 minutes.

I wonder is it playing right now? The jazz standard reflects on lynching in America, as does the piano with a tree growing violently through it, the bench knocked to the ground. "Blossom" is installed in the lobby alongside our exhibition The Legacy of Lynching: Confronting Racial Terror in America.

Blossom

Sanford Biggers

Contemporary Art

In Sanford Biggers’s Blossom, a piano fused with a tree plays “Strange Fruit” (in an arrangement by the artist). The song, popularized in the 1930s by Billie Holiday, protests the atrocity of lynching:

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

The haunting lyrics suggest that the piano attached to such a tree might be interpreted as a surrogate for a violated human body.

In making this work, the artist was influenced by a 2006 incident in Jena, Louisiana, in which nooses were dangled from a tree at a local high school. The Equal Justice Initiative has found that Louisiana was one of the states in which a disproportionately high number of racial terror lynchings took place between 1877 and 1950.

More broadly, however, the piece also evokes the rich cross-cultural symbolism of trees. For instance, Biggers has cited the story of Buddha finding enlightenment under a bodhi tree. The work’s unlikely combination of the heinous and the compassionate demonstrates the artist’s paradoxical interest in multiplicities of both inspiration and interpretation.

ARTIST Sanford Biggers, American, born 1970

MEDIUM Steel, plastic and synthetic fibers, wood, MIDI player piano system, Zoopoxy, pigment, soil, modelling clay, polyurethane foam

DATES 2007

DIMENSIONS 12 x 18 x 15 feet (365.9 x 548.8 x 457.3 cm) (show scale)

COLLECTIONS Contemporary Art

ACCESSION NUMBER 2011.10

CREDIT LINE Purchase gift of Toby Devan Lewis, Charles and Amber Patton, and an anonymous donor, gift of the Contemporary Art Council, and the Mary Smith Dorward Fund

EXHIBITIONS

MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view

CAPTION Sanford Biggers (American, born 1970). Blossom, 2007. Steel, plastic and synthetic fibers, wood, MIDI player piano system, Zoopoxy, pigment, soil, modelling clay, polyurethane foam, 12 x 18 x 15 feet (365.9 x 548.8 x 457.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Purchase gift of Toby Devan Lewis, Charles and Amber Patton, and an anonymous donor, gift of the Contemporary Art Council, and the Mary Smith Dorward Fund, 2011.10. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, DIG_E_2017_The_Legacy_of_Lynching_2011.10_view01_PS11.jpg)

IMAGE DIG_E_2017_The_Legacy_of_Lynching_2011.10_view01_PS11.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2017

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