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Artist Tony Berlant American, born 1941

Date1997

MediumCollage: color-printed and cut metal and brads on three plywood panels

DimensionsOverall: 120 x 104 in. (304.8 x 264.2 cm)
Left panel: 120 x 35 in. (304.8 x 88.9 cm)
Center panel: 120 x 33 in. (304.8 x 83.8 cm)
Right panel: 120 x 36 in. (304.8 x 91.4 cm)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Art Trust Fund, Peter and Shirley Howsam, Mr. and Mrs. Harley F. Shuford, Jr., Julia S. Elsee, Allison Elsee, Mr. and Mrs. George D. Beischer, and an anonymous donor

Object number98.1a-c

On View

Not on view

Label TextUsing commercially printed sheet metal, Tony Berlant creates exuberant and surprisingly painterly collages. As the title implies, the artist here has used his own fingerprint, enlarged to gigantic size, as the organizing structure for this composition. The fingerprint serves as an alternative self-portrait. Even so, the image is visually unstable. Although from a distance the subject is readily identifiable, closer up, it loses coherence, becoming a roiling vortex of line and color.ProvenanceCreated California, 1997; collection of the artist, Santa Monica; [Klein Art Works, Chicago, IL, 1997]; sold to NCMA, 1998.
Published ReferencesBarbara A. MacAdam, "Tony Berlant" (exhibition review), Art News 96 (June 1997), 127-28, illus. 127.

Janet Koplos, "Tony Berlant at Lennon, Weinberg" (exhibition review), Art in America 85 (September 1997), 107, illus.

Barbara D. Bucholz, "When TV trays show their metal" (exhibition review), Chicago Tribune (November 7, 1997), sec. 7, p. 69.

"Acquisitions," North Carolina Museum of Art Annual Report (1997-98), illus. (b-w) 48.

Branford Marsalis Quartet/North Carolina Symphony/Grant Llewellyn, American Spectrum (audio CD) (Åkersberga, Sweden: BIS Records AB, 2008), illus. (color) front cover.Exhibition HistoryNew York, NY, Lennon, Weinberg, "Tony Berlant", February 13-March 15, 1997

Chicago, IL, Klein Art Works, October 18-November 15, 1997, illus. (color) brochure.
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