Name/Title
Menzel's FootEntry/Object ID
2008.03.01Description
Angela Grauerholz is a German-born Montreal-based photographic artist. She obtained a degree in design from Kunstschule Alsterdamm in Hamburg, as well as studied literature and linguistics at the University of Hamburg. After relocating to Montréal in 1976, she earned a Master’s degree in photography from Concordia University.
Grauerholz’s photographs are characterized by their out-of-focus aesthetic, odd framing, and grainy quality that give them the appearance of paintings or hasty photography. Her practice draws from historic photographic practices and is shaped by an interest in collections, archives, and feminism. The subject matter is diverse and ranges from common landscapes to building interiors, to images of people. Many of her images are intended to document the act of looking.
Menzel’s Foot (2008) captures an interior gallery of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin. On a wall of the gallery hangs a painting by Adolph von Menzel (1815–1905), one of the greatest German realist painters of the nineteenth cCentury. Depicted in oil is a self-portrait of Menzel’s right foot from the perspective of the artist. Garuerholz, who habitually captures images of feet in art galleries, finds amusement in the dichotomy between the seriousness of the gallery and the strangeness of the subject.
The foot is memorialized as an artistic achievement in the empty room of the museum where it is positioned right in the viewer’s face. Grauerholz uses composition and framing to point out the absurd amount of attention given to Menzel's foot and to document its impact on German cultural memory.
Grauerholz has been recognized with several significant honours, such as Québec’s Prix Paul-Émile Borduas (2006) and the Canada Council’s Governor General Award in Visual and Media Arts (2014).
http://angelagrauerholz.com/Artwork Details
Medium
inkjet print on arches paperMade/Created
Date made
2008Edition
ed. 1/4Dimensions
Height
101.5 cmWidth
152.6 cm