About this artwork
For the series “Renaissance Paintings and Drawings”, Sarah Charlesworth trained her attention on Western high art at a time when she was also studying psychoanalytic readings of art and literature. Here she isolated a detail from the painting “The Mystical Nativity” (1500–1501) by Sandro Botticelli, in which an angel and a man embrace at the event of Jesus’s birth. In Charlesworth’s doubled separation, figures are not only removed from the original painting but also parted from each other across the two planes of a diptych. One could imagine the separation anxiety of a child weaned from his or her mother, as well as the particular future that awaits Christ, first death and then resurrection.
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Status
- Currently Off View
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Department
- Photography and Media
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Artist
- Sarah Charlesworth
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Title
- Separation, from the series "Renaissance Paintings and Drawings" (1991)
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Place
- United States (Artist's nationality:)
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Date
- Made 1991
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Medium
- Silver dye-bleach prints (2), lacquered wood
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Edition
- 2 of 2 artist's proofs from an edition of 5 plus two artist's proofs
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Inscriptions
- Blind stamped recto, right panel, lower right: SARAH CHARLESWORTH / NEW YORK
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Dimensions
- Each image: 131.4 × 47.2 cm (51 3/4 × 18 5/8 in.); each frame: 143 × 59 cm (56 5/16 × 23 1/4 in.); overall: 143 × 122 cm (56 5/16 × 48 1/16 in.)
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Credit Line
- Purchased with funds provided by Elena Urschel
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Reference Number
- 2015.189a-b
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Copyright
- © The Estate of Sarah Charlesworth.
Extended information about this artwork
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.
