About This Artwork
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
American, born Cuba, 1957-1996
"Untitled"1989–present
Enamel paint on wall
Dimensions variable
The Art Institute of Chicago: bequest of Carolyn Spiegel; Watson F. Blair Prize, Muriel Kallis Newman, Sara Szold and Modern and Contemporary Discretionary funds; Samuel and Sarah Deson and Oscar Gerber Memorial endowments; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Accessions Committee Fund Purchase: gift of Jean and James E. Douglas Jr., Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein, Collectors Forum, Doris and Don Fisher, Niko and Steve Mayer, Elaine McKeon, and Danielle and Brooks Walker Jr., 2002.80
“Untitled" is a self-portrait consisting of words and dates. This unique, conceptual, deceptively simple device exemplifies the quiet, elegiac nature of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s work. Weaving intimate personal milestones and communal events of our historical era into a friezelike text, the artist did not limit the inscriptions to events that occurred between his birth and death. In fact, the owner of “Untitled” is compelled to continue to add (and subtract) events, thereby granting it, and the artist himself, a form of continuously renewable life. This work reminds us that all human identity is mutable and open-ended.