Forbidden Fruit
Nina Chanel Abney
Contemporary Art
As she has done in the past, Nina Abney here creates a highly personal, imaginative, and eclectic interpretation of a literary source. Forbidden Fruit, part of a series inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, alludes to the chapter featuring a hookah-puffing caterpillar. According to the artist, the composition of the figures and the choice of light blue and green were drawn from Henri Matisse’s 1909 painting The Dance. Sea-Monkeys (a species of brine shrimp sold as curiosities during the artist’s childhood) provided the model for the two figures with antennae sitting on the left, and the numbers that appear on various figures also have personal meaning for Abney. Though the original Alice is absent here, Abney’s boldly hued hallucinatory scene populated by fantastic creatures vividly simulates the magical environment of the text, in which Alice experiments with mushrooms that allow her to grow and shrink in size.
MEDIUM
Acrylic on canvas
DATES
2009
DIMENSIONS
67 x 77 1/2 in. (170.2 x 196.9 cm) (show scale)
COLLECTIONS
Contemporary Art
ACCESSION NUMBER
2009.23
CREDIT LINE
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Warren Brandt and anonymous gift, by exchange
PROVENANCE
2009, purchased form Kravets/Wehby Gallery by the Brooklyn Museum.
Provenance FAQ
EXHIBITIONS
MUSEUM LOCATION
This item is not on view
CAPTION
Nina Chanel Abney (American, born 1982). Forbidden Fruit, 2009. Acrylic on canvas, 67 x 77 1/2 in. (170.2 x 196.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Warren Brandt and anonymous gift, by exchange, 2009.23. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Photograph courtesy of the Kravets/Wehby Gallery, New York, CUR.2009.23_Kravets_Wehby_Gallery_photograph.jpg)
IMAGE
overall, Courtesy of the Kravets/Wehby Gallery, New York, CUR.2009.23_Kravets_Wehby_Gallery_photograph.jpg. Photograph courtesy of the Kravets/Wehby Gallery, New York
"CUR" at the beginning of an image file name means that the image was created by a curatorial staff member. These study images may be digital point-and-shoot photographs, when we don\'t yet have high-quality studio photography, or they may be scans of older negatives, slides, or photographic prints, providing historical documentation of the object.
RIGHTS STATEMENT
© Nina Chanel Abney
The Brooklyn Museum holds a non-exclusive license to reproduce images of this work of art from the rights holder named here.
The Museum does not warrant that the use of this work will not infringe on the rights of third parties. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions before copying, transmitting, or making other use of protected items beyond that allowed by "fair use," as such term is understood under the United States Copyright Act.
For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch.
For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright.
If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org.
If you wish to contact the rights holder for this work, please email copyright@brooklynmuseum.org and we will assist if we can.
RECORD COMPLETENESS
Not every record you will find here is complete. More information is available for some works than for others, and some entries have been updated more recently. Records are frequently reviewed and revised, and we welcome any additional information you might have.
![[Untitled] (Cancellation Prints)](https://d1lfxha3ugu3d4.cloudfront.net/images/opencollection/objects/size2_sq/2003.60b_PS9.jpg)
