P.R. Hovland

Pamela Hovland‘s Comment in response to our recent wallpaper post is an amazing report from MOMA of a wallpaper installation that is so wonderfully described, hilarious and thoughtful, that we had to publish it here. And just as we were despairing of not being able to find any image like it on MOMA’s website, Pamela sent us one by email: blurry but completely expressive…

“I stopped by MoMA today, for a quick dose of inspiration. The Matisse show is on view so it is quite crowded — it takes all one’s attention just to negotiate the hallways. As a result, I don’t think many people stopped to look closely at a wallpaper “installation” between two galleries. The wallpaper is a temporary construction made simply by repeating a photograph numerous times in a grid. The image is a tightly cropped view of a man’s bare bottom (I’m trying to be polite) with his crack (I can’t think of another word here) in the center of the composition. It’s not a particularly photogenic specimen; upon closer analysis you see the dimples and blemishes of some anonymous middle aged guy’s rear end. In this presentation, however, the image takes on a kind of architectural quality – a kind of industrial building block, I guess. The imperfections are lost as the sum of the parts takes precedence.

Makes me want to create wallpaper at home out of some crazy image fragment I have lying around. Not a body part though… it’s been done!

Now that I think about it, this installation is a bit like your Lego post AND the wallpaper post — conflated!”

Yoko Ono + George Maciunas (Fluxus)

If anyone knows the name of the artist who created the wallpaper installation at MOMA, please let us know. We will try to get there ourselves soon and fill up on the Matisse show…

UPDATE! No sooner had we sent the post into the ether than a reader posted info and a link about the wallpaper in Comments:  It is by Yoko Ono and George Maciunas who were part of Fluxus, an informal collective of avant-garde artists in the early sixties and seventies. Apparently the butt immortalized on the wallpaper may not be a man’s, but Yoko Ono’s…

THANKS A MILLION, PAMELA AND monkha!

Related post: Tacked-Up Wallpaper (Un-Permanent and D-I-Y)

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4 replies on “MOMA’s photo wallpaper (a piece of ass)

  1. THANK YOU SO MUCH!! We are going to add this to the post.

  2. I hope Yoko Ono isn’t offended that I mistook her ass for a middle-aged man’s. I’d hate to know what she thought of mine!

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