THE COLLECTION
Gordon Matta-Clark (American, 1943–1978)
Circus-The Caribbean Orange
- Date:
- 1978
- Medium:
- Silver dye bleach print
- Dimensions:
- 39 1/2 x 29 7/8" (100.3 x 75.9 cm)
- Credit Line:
- Acquired through the generosity of The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art, with contributions from Robert Beyer, Ellen R. Herman, Scott J. Lorinsky, Steven T. Mnuchin and Muffy Perlbinder
- MoMA Number:
- 373.1998
- Copyright:
- © 2013 Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
The Shaping of New Visions: Photography, Film, Photobook
April 16, 2012–April 29, 2013
Matta-Clark received formal training as an architect at Cornell University, where he studied with Colin Rowe, a preeminent theorist of architectural modernism. Yet Matta-Clark did not practice architecture, which he considered a pretentious enterprise; instead he devised "anarchitecture," an alternative use of buildings entailing a rejection of what he called "the functionalist aspect of past-due Machine Age moralists." In Splitting and Circus—The Caribbean Orange, he literally dissected buildings, cutting and carving them into gravity-defying structures. The films and photocollages he made of these pieces dovetail with the experimental, disorienting quality of his architectural cuts, which constitute a denunciation not just of the functions of architecture but of the American dream of progress.
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