Mabou

1979

Robert Frank

Associated Names
Robert Frank

Artist, American, born Switzerland, 1924 - 2019

This is a photograph of frames placed within outdoor scenes. The composition consists of six sections, each featuring a large empty rectangular frame in different snowy and coastal landscapes. The top row includes black-and-white images. The first section shows a building and pole in snowy terrain, with the frame angled. The middle section shows the frame in snowy ground with hills and trees, with "YESTERDAY" scratched into the image. The third section depicts the frame against a wire fence on a snowy hill, overlooking water under a cloudy sky.

The bottom row starts with the frame near a container in a coastal area, with "FIRE to the South" written below. The next section shows the frame on a coast, partially colored in red, with "To the East/Answered" written over it; the top is lightly dyed with blue. The last section features a figure in the frame with outstretched arms in the landscape. The artwork mixes photography with abstract interventions, overlaying text and colored enhancements on empty landscapes defined by symbolic frames.

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Artwork overview


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

PaceWildensteinMacGill, New York, NY; purchased with donated funds from the Collectors Committee by NGA, 1992.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1994

  • Robert Frank: Moving Out, National Gallery of Art, Washington; Yokohama Museum of Art; Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Lannan Foundation, Los Angeles, 1994-1996, no. 143.

Bibliography

1989

  • Frank, Robert. The Lines of My Hand. New York, 1989: pl. 118.

1994

  • Greenough/Brookman 1994, pp. 258-259.

Inscriptions

lower right scratched in red paint: Mabou Dec 79 Robert Frank

Wikidata ID

Q64164052

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