Untitled #22
Maker
Laura Letinsky
(American, born in Canada, 1962)
Date1999 - 2000
MediumChromogenic print
DimensionsSheet: 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm)
Framed: 25 3/8 x 31 3/8 x 2 1/4 in. (64.5 x 79.7 x 5.7 cm)
Framed: 25 3/8 x 31 3/8 x 2 1/4 in. (64.5 x 79.7 x 5.7 cm)
Credit LinePurchase, Gift of Carl Rungius, by exchange
Object number2001.41
Object TypePhotographs
On View
Not on viewLaura Letinsky: Early Work from Smart Museum of Art on Vimeo.
Laura Letinsky: Inspiration from Smart Museum of Art on Vimeo.
This photograph comes from Laura Letinsky’s second major body of work, a series of still lifes titled Hardly More Than Ever (formerly, Morning and Melancholia, 1997–2001). In these works, Letinsky transforms domestic detritus into images that imbue the still life—one of the classic genres of Western art—with fresh formal possibilities and contemporary emotional resonance. Her title puns on Sigmund Freud’s classic essay “Mourning and Melancholia.” In these pictures, Letinsky arranges evocative fragments left over from meals into precise compositions, expressing the tensions latent within the domestic feast: its dark edges as well as its sensual and convivial pleasures. Her images capitalize on the genre’s history as well as its current glossy prevalence in lifestyle blogs and magazines.
Her approach to still life grew out of her first major body of work, Venus Inferred (1989–96): this series of sensual yet uneasy portraits of couples at home evoke both relational distance and feelings of intimacy. Shifting to still life allowed Letinsky to more obliquely probe tender topics like the complexities of domestic experience, desire’s inevitable slide into loss, and the drive to consume, while further extending her interest in the slippage between sensation and its photographic representation. The assembled, fallen peony petals piled on the table in Untitled #22 express how carefully that slippage is staged.
Her approach to still life grew out of her first major body of work, Venus Inferred (1989–96): this series of sensual yet uneasy portraits of couples at home evoke both relational distance and feelings of intimacy. Shifting to still life allowed Letinsky to more obliquely probe tender topics like the complexities of domestic experience, desire’s inevitable slide into loss, and the drive to consume, while further extending her interest in the slippage between sensation and its photographic representation. The assembled, fallen peony petals piled on the table in Untitled #22 express how carefully that slippage is staged.
