Nina Katchadourian
2022
Digital chromogenic print.
12.5 x 19 inches (31.8 x 48.3 cm)
Purchased as the gift of Richard and Ronay Menschel.
2023.1:13
Provenance:
Nina Katchadourian.
Notes:
Look Who's Talking, 2022, featuring books in the Carter Burden Collection, is a series in the artist's "Sorted Books" project, 1993 and ongoing.
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In each installment of her "Sorted Books" project (1993 and ongoing), Katchadourian scours an individual's or institution's bookshelves in search of titles that, when stacked in sequence, form short phrases, stories, poems, or commentary. Her subjects have included the artist Isamu Noguchi, the writers William S. Burroughs and August Strindberg, and several personal friends.
At the Morgan, she worked with the Carter Burden Collection of American Literature, amassed by that bon vivant, politician, and philanthropist between 1978 and 1995. "Burden embraced the high and the low, traditions both popular and obscure," she writes. She was attracted by Burden's interest in whole of twentieth-century publishing, as well as his commitment to collecting multiple editions of a given book, which allowed her to employ repetition in her compositions. In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Edward Albee's query finds an answer in title characters created by Zane Grey, Henry Miller, Ben Hecht, and William Faulkner, in addition to Munro Leaf's peaceful Spanish bull, Ferdinand.