It sends shivers down your spine when you look at it. And no: this sculpture is not real. It is a work by the artist Bruce Conner (1933-2008), which lay dormant for years in the depot of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and can now be seen in two exhibitions in America. As early as 1970, the […]
It sends shivers down your spine when you look at it. And no: this sculpture is not real. It is a work by the artist Bruce Conner (1933-2008), which lay dormant for years in the depot of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and can now be seen in two exhibitions in America.
The object came to the MoMA as early as 1970 and was created around 1959/60. It shows a child made of black wax “after execution in a gas chamber”, as the artist describes it. Nylon stockings tie the sculpture to a high chair and draw attention to a spectacular execution case from the 1960s. Cary Chessman was sentenced to death in California in 1948 for kidnapping and rape and executed in the gas chamber of Saint-Quentin Prison on May 2, 1960. The tragedy: To this day, it is unclear whether Chessman was actually responsible for the offenses charged. The death sentence was postponed a total of eight times, the last time the news of the postponement came too late – the judge’s secretary had dialed the wrong number. The case, which caused a worldwide sensation, was picked up by many media outlets, including the Times and Der Spiegel.
“Bruce Conner initially wanted to create a bronze sculpture sitting in a glass gas chamber and then decided on the children’s chair by expressionist Sonia Gechthoff,” explains conservator Roger Griffith, who worked with Megan Randall for three years to preserve the object. “The artist wanted to show an aged state and evoke feelings of pain and disgust in the viewer,” says the curator of the current exhibition “Bruce Conner: It’s All True”, which can be seen in New York until October 2, 2016 and will then travel to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Not an easy task to spend three years with such an object, especially as the work arrived at the museum in 1970 in very poor condition. One of the sculpture’s reinforcements was missing, meaning that the head had fallen onto the chest, among other things. Until 2014, various attempts were made to conserve and restore the sculpture. The position of the artist also had to be taken into account. “The artist’s wish was that only materials that had already been processed should be used and that the original appearance should not be touched,” says Megan Randall. However, the artist revised this position shortly before his death and allowed additional materials to be used. Nevertheless, the conservation and restoration was very time-consuming. In close consultation with the Conner Family Trust, the decision was made to reconstruct the chair and secure the sculpture with polyester resins. The work was documented in a film. You can read more about this project in the next issue of RESTAURO.
