Woman Smelling Her Roses

Sculpture

-

Paul Harris Estate

Woman Smelling Her Roses, 1966, acrylic, resin, and ink on textile and wood, 60 x 24 x 42 inches

Woman Smelling Her Roses, 1966, acrylic, resin, and ink on textile and wood, 60 x 24 x 42 inches

Name/Title

Woman Smelling Her Roses

Entry/Object ID

324

Artwork Details

Medium

Acrylic, resin, and ink on textile and wood

Made/Created

Artist

Paul Harris

Date made

1966

Edition

Edition Size

1 of 1

Other Names and Numbers

Other Numbers

Number Type

Previous PH Estate Inventory Number

Other Number

69.00

Dimensions

Height

60 in

Width

24 in

Depth

42 in

Relationships

Related Person or Organization

Person or Organization

Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art

Notes

Budapest, Hungary; Long-term loan from the Peter und Irene Ludwig Stiftung, Aachen, 1991

Related Publications

Publication

Brown, Theophilus. <i>Paul Harris Sculpture</i>. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000.

Notes

fig. 43, features version with striped chair, dimensions vary

Exhibitions

Exhibition

<i>Paul Harris</i>, Poindexter Gallery, New York, NY, December 20, 1966–January 14, 1967

Notes

Based on the image in the checklist, a previous version of this workwas shown featuring a striped chair.
<i>People Figures</i>, Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York, NY, November 19, 1966–January 8, 1967
<i>American Sculpture of the Sixties</i> [traveling exhibition], Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA, April 28–June 25, 1967; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA, September 25–October 29, 1967
<i>Paul Harris</i>, Galerie M.E. Thelen, Essen, Germany, 1970

General Notes

Note Type

Remarks

Note

An earlier version of this work featured a striped chair. “Tuchman selected four vibrantly colorful soft sculptures depicting women for the exhibition [<i>American Sculpture of the Sixties</i>, 1967]: <i>Women Laughing</i> (1964), <i>Woman Giving Her Greeting</i> (1964), <i>Woman in Green Gown</i> (1965), and <i>Woman Smelling Her Roses</i> (1966). In each, Harris’s female figures perform a routine action that suggests another person or thing (such as laughing, greeting, looking, or smelling). All but <i>Woman Giving Her Greeting</i> incorporates a patterned, rotund, and seemingly comfortable chair or chaise with which the figure’s simplified physicality coalesces. These early stuffed works are tableaus not unlike those of Marisol or Edward Kienholz made in through hard materials, and they anticipate the installation or ‘environmental’ work that these artists would explore over the decades from the 1970s onward. However, Harris would explore the relational and situational aspects in his soft sculpture, emphasizing a volume of form instead of an emptied-out, ‘hollow’ of object that Barbara Rose describes in ‘Post-Cubist Sculpture,’ her essay for <i>American Sculpture of the Sixties</i>.” —Leah Triplett, “Interior Interests,” 2026.

Created By

[email protected]

Create Date

August 27, 2025

Updated By

[email protected]

Update Date

September 16, 2026