Breast Forms Permutated

1972, printed 2008

Not on view

The critical spirit of feminism and the serial procedures of conceptualism collide to hilarious effect in Wilson’s Breast Forms Permutated. Permutation, from a branch of mathematics called set theory, was a favorite device of not only conceptual artists of the 1960s and 1970s, but also of novelist and playwright Samuel Beckett, who used it to create formal and linguistic patterns. Instead of applying it to intervals or words, however, Wilson applies it to one of the most fetishized aspects of female anatomy: breasts. Here the artist permutes the breast form, deriving nine iterations from a single variable. Mocking the tendency to police the female body and to establish universal standards of female beauty, Wilson places the "perfect set" in the center of her grid.

Artwork Details

Title: Breast Forms Permutated
Artist: Martha Wilson (American, born Newtown, Pennsylvania, 1947)
Date: 1972, printed 2008
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Dimensions: Frame: 16 3/8 × 14 in. (41.6 × 35.6 cm)
Image: 5 3/8 × 7 5/16 in. (13.7 × 18.5 cm) (visible)
Image: 3 1/8 × 5 1/4 in. (8 × 13.4 cm) (visible)
Classification: Photographs
Credit Line: Purchase, Vital Projects Fund Inc. Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, and Gift of Jamie Nadal, by exchange, 2017
Object Number: 2017.277
Rights and Reproduction: © Martha Wilson. Courtesy of the artist and P.P.O.W. Gallery, New York
Curatorial Department: Photographs

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