Thomas Hirschhorn. Provide Ruins III. 2003

Thomas Hirschhorn Provide Ruins III 2003

  • Not on view

In this series Hirschhorn pairs the extreme brutality of war with the world of advertising and commerce. Since the 1980s he has made socially engaged works that confront viewers and implicate them in the creation of meaning, combining images and text from mass culture with everyday materials like cardboard, cellophane, and duct tape in deliberately crude collages. Here he has paired images of war-torn buildings and victims of war with the faces of fashion models, all overlaid with blue ink that appears to stream and seep from the figures like tears or blood. The work's title, Provide Ruins, mimics the names the military and the media bestowed on war operations, such as Desert Shield and Restore Hope.

Publication excerpt from The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights since 1980, New York: The Museum of Modern Art , p. 243.
Medium
Cut-and-pasted printed paper with felt-tip pen, ballpoint pen, and pressure-sensitive tape on paper wrapped in synthetic polymer sheet
Dimensions
20 1/2 x 23 1/2" (52.1 x 59.7 cm)
Credit
The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection Gift
Object number
1865.2005.3
Copyright
© 2021 Thomas Hirschhorn
Department
Drawings and Prints

Installation views

We have identified these works in the following photos from our exhibition history.
How we identified these works

In 2018–19, MoMA collaborated with Google Arts & Culture Lab on a project using machine learning to identify artworks in installation photos. That project has concluded, and works are now being identified by MoMA staff.

If you notice an error, please contact us at [email protected].

Licensing

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

All requests to license audio or video footage produced by MoMA should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills or motion picture footage from films in MoMA’s Film Collection cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For licensing motion picture film footage it is advised to apply directly to the copyright holders. For access to motion picture film stills please contact the Film Study Center. More information is also available about the film collection and the Circulating Film and Video Library.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].

Feedback

This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please send feedback to [email protected].