Framework Houses

1959–1972

Not on view

Returned to lender

This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.

Bernd and Hilla Becher found artistic inspiration in the underappreciated beauty of the built environment, specifically, commonplace industrial and residential architecture. The Bechers’ use of typological ordering, as seen here in a grid of fifteen framework-house studies, can be traced to Hilla’s interest in the concepts of taxonomy and morphology, which are systems of biological classification based on shape and function. They called their assemblages “typologies” and used this effective graphic structure to compare similar and different forms, as would a researcher studying a collection of fossils or butterflies.

Artwork Details

Overview

Title: Framework Houses
Artist: Bernd and Hilla Becher (German, active 1959–2007)
Date: 1959–1972
Medium: Gelatin silver prints
Dimensions: 15 7/8 × 12 3/16 in. (40.3 × 30.9 cm), each
Frame: 22 1/4 × 18 5/16 × 1 1/8 in. (56.5 × 46.5 × 2.8 cm), each
Classification: Photographs
Credit Line: Collection of Jeffrey Fraenkel & Alan Mark
Curatorial Department: Photographs