Buzzard
Baum uses books and language as objects to be manipulated and transformed through photography. In Buzzard two disparate sections of text are brought into a chance alignment that can be read in multiple directions. They also fit into the modernist tradition of concrete poetry (examples include Stephane Mallarmé's A Throw of the Dice and the “cut-up” technique of William Burroughs and Bryon Gysin), with the play of verbal and visual signs becoming the raw material of the work of art that is a carefully calibrated mix of chance and intention. The act of scavenging that the title suggests is also purposefully ambiguous, referring not only to the artist's picking over of a dying world but also to the rapacious way in which a rapidly advancing digital culture colonizes how we process information and perceive reality.
Artwork Details
- Title: Buzzard
- Artist: Erica Baum (American, born New York, 1961)
- Date: 2009
- Medium: Inkjet print
- Dimensions: Image: 22.9 x 22.9 cm (9 x 9 in.)
Sheet: 55.9 x 43.2 cm (22 x 17 in.) - Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Purchase, Marian and James H. Cohen Gift, in memory of their son, Michael Harrison Cohen, 2012
- Object Number: 2012.306
- Rights and Reproduction: © Erica Baum
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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Erica Baum
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