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Christopher Wool
Untitled, 1989

This artwork was featured in New Work: A New Generation. Learn more about SFMOMA’s New Work series.

Artwork Info

Artwork title
Untitled
Artist name
Christopher Wool
Date created
1989
Classification
painting
Medium
acrylic and enamel on aluminum
Dimensions
96 × 64 in. (243.84 × 162.56 cm)
Date acquired
1989
Credit
Collection SFMOMA
Accessions Committee Fund purchase: gift of Collectors' Forum, Doris and Donald Fisher, Byron R. Meyer, and Thomas W. Weisel
Copyright
© Christopher Wool
Permanent URL
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/89.163
Artwork status
Not on view at this time.

Audio Stories

Why paint a word?

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transcripts

NARRATOR:

There are contradictory messages in this work by Christopher Wool. Its a word, but a word without context. Its split up into stacked letters, as to become almost unreadable. The word is Adversary—implying some sort of conflict. Wool presents it almost like a highway or construction sign. Its painted with a stencil, on an aluminum panel. Are we to read the painting, or look at it? 

 

Wools work questions the very nature of painting. In his text paintings in particular, he strips away all the traditional concerns of painting; namely, color, form, line, and composition. He uses visible handiwork to create letters that exist as objects. But their material presence – on a large, imposing scale—contrasts with their own lack of meaning. In a way, theyve become abstracted. The words meaning is at once reinforced and cancelled out. The artwork uses language to subvert painting, and painting to subvert language. 

 

So is the painting itself an adversary of meaning?  

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Other Works by Christopher Wool

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