Untitled (Blondie IV)

Work on Paper

-

DePaul Art Museum

Name/Title

Untitled (Blondie IV)

Entry/Object ID

2019.20

Description

Abstract image of Debbie Harry from Blondie with squares of silver foil and stripes of glitter.

Artwork Details

Medium

Digital scan, aluminum foil, glitter

Subject Person

Debbie Harry

Context

A detail-oriented and labor intensive maker, Sparks often taps into the traditions of women’s labor and craft including sewing and weaving, using glitter and fabrics as signature materials. Taken from Sparks’ series We’re treating each other just like strangers, whose title references a song lyric from Brian Eno’s first solo studio album Here Come the Warm Jets (1974). Using found photographs and images of famous rock and pop musicians such as Blondie, The Ramones, and The Talking Heads as well as images from Gerhard Richter’s series of paintings October 18, 1977, Sparks manipulates them by overlapping fabric and glitter in the style of a Russian Supremacist composition. Exploring the iconography of pop, her compositions use graphic and symbolic overlays in order to highlight the formal aspects of these well-known images. Untitled (Blondie IV) features a black and white photograph of rock musician Debbie Harry (lead singer of Blondie), but which is overlaid with aluminum foil and glitter, a material which often appears in Sparks’ work. The bricolé shapes mark the presence of the artist in transforming these images, evoking a tension between the found and the created that references Duchamp’s famous challenge to the traditional notion of authorship, an important influence on Sparks’ work.

Acquisition

Accession

2019.17-25

Source or Donor

Julie Campbell, Shane Campbell

Acquisition Method

Gift

Credit Line

Gift of Julie and Shane Campbell

Made/Created

Artist

Meredyth Sparks

Date made

2007

Ethnography

Notes

American

Lexicon

Nomenclature 4.0

Nomenclature Secondary Object Term

Print, Photographic

Nomenclature Primary Object Term

Photograph

Nomenclature Sub-Class

Graphic Documents

Nomenclature Class

Documentary Objects

Nomenclature Category

Category 08: Communication Objects

LOC Thesaurus for Graphic Materials

Rock & roll bands, Singers

Dimensions

Height

18-1/4 in

Width

13 in

Depth

1 in

Dimension Notes

47.14 cm. x 33.02 cm. x 2.69 cm.