Four Thousand Images
Stella Waitzkin
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
Stella Waitzkin found her creative voice building elaborate personal environments in her apartment in the Chelsea Hotel and house on Martha’s Vineyard. A lover of books as objects and metaphors for intellectual freedom, Waitzkin collected thousands of volumes and cast them in resin, rendering them into unreadable sculptural abstractions, and built ambitious installations of freestanding bookcases and library walls to house them. She also cast human faces and other household objects to embellish her environments. In the avant-garde atmosphere of the downtown art scene of the 1970s, Waitzkin also made political performances, taking to heart Robert Rauschenberg’s famous advice that artists should “live at the intersection of art and life.”
Waitzkin became an artist while raising a family in Great Neck, New York, taking the train into the city to study painting with Hans Hofmann and drawing with Willem de Kooning. After her divorce, the artist moved to New York City, where, in spite of the friendships she forged with artists Franz Kline, Malcolm Morley, Louise Nevelson, and Larry Rivers, she became increasingly suspicious of the art world, withdrawing over the decades into her work and the environments she created.
MEDIUM
Polyester resin
DATES
1993
DIMENSIONS
48 x 70 x 12 1/2 in. (121.9 x 177.8 x 31.8 cm)
(show scale)
ACCESSION NUMBER
2012.69
CREDIT LINE
Gift of Agnes Gund, New York
MUSEUM LOCATION
This item is not on view
CAPTION
Stella Waitzkin (American, 1920–2003). Four Thousand Images, 1993. Polyester resin, 48 x 70 x 12 1/2 in. (121.9 x 177.8 x 31.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Agnes Gund, New York, 2012.69. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: , CUR.2012.69_overall.jpg)
IMAGE
overall,
CUR.2012.69_overall.jpg.
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RIGHTS STATEMENT
© Waitzkin Memorial Library Trust
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Tell me more.
At her studio in the Chelsea Hotel, Waitzkin created "Libraries": entire walls filled with shelves of resin-cast books and found objects.
Although this work physically represents a shelf of books, they have become abstract objects in the sense that their original purpose is no longer identifiable; they cannot be opened and read.
If you look closely, you'll see all sorts of interesting things -- from book titles, to little sculptures hidden within!
