Waking

Tom Wudl American, born Bolivia
2009
Not on view
In Waking, Wudl seems to explore the assumed link between Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953) and the comedic team of Laurel and Hardy. A few have pointed out the connection between Beckett’s hobos Vladimir and Estragon and the tramps performed by the Hollywood team in some of their films. What Wudl seems to point to, however, is the Zen state that can be achieved through waiting—whether through tantric meditation as in the Avatamsaka Sutra or through the existentialist "nothing" that happens in Beckett’s play—and the elaborate trefoils and floral motifs that encrust the work's surface point to the efflorescence one might achieve through such states of being.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title:
    Waking
  • Artist:
    Tom Wudl (American (born Bolivia), Cochabamba 1948)
  • Date:
    2009
  • Medium:
    Graphite and incising on paper
  • Dimensions:
    13 x 9 1/2 in. (33 x 24.1 cm)
  • Classification:
    Drawings
  • Credit Line:
    Gift of Donna and Bruce Polichar, 2018
  • Object Number:
    2018.884.2
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

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