Candice Breitz - NOW: Art of the 21st Century Theme Sale New York Saturday, March 6, 2010 | Phillips

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  • Provenance


    Art & Public, Geneva

  • Catalogue Essay



    For me the most provocative tale dealing with the origin of multiple languages is the biblical story of the ‘Tower of
    Babel’, in which God punishes man for his vanity and grandiosity precisely by violently denying him the ability to
    understand the languages of others. When I made the ‘Babel Series’ installation in 1999, this violent failure, the failure
    of language to function as the glue coalescing different cultures (which is still the case now as much as it was then),
    became a compelling point of reference for me.
    Many Key Members of the twentieth-century avant-garde were preoccupied with the possibility of a universal language
    that might communicate above and beyond the specificity of linguistic and national references…With the ‘Babel Series’
    I wanted to make a work that would pay homage to such endeavors while at the same time recognizing the extent to
    which any notion of pure language has become increasingly hard to maintain…The most primal units of language are
    regurgitated by the ambassadors of MTV, this being a medium which has succeeded—beyond the wildest dreams of
    the twentieth-century avant-garde—in forging a language that is accessible to people from vastly different contexts.
    Candice Breitz in an interview with Rosanne Altstatt, ‘Killing Me Softly…An Interview with Candice Breitz,’
    Kunst-Bulletin, No. 6: June, 2001

156

Babel Mirrors (Grace Jones, Wham, Prince, The Police, Abba, Queen, Madonna)

2000

Video stills on polystyrene mirror in seven parts.

12 3/8 x 70 5/8 in. (31.4 x 179.4 cm) each.

Signed, titled, dated “C Breitz 2000” and numbered of eight on the reverse of each panel. This work is an artist’s proof from an edition of eight artist’s proofs.

Estimate
$30,000 - 40,000 

NOW: Art of the 21st Century Theme Sale

6 March 2010
New York