"Untitled" (Petit Palais)

Gallery 276, Modern and Contemporary Art, second floor (Alter Gallery)

Main Building

"Untitled" (Petit Palais)

1992

Felix Gonzalez-Torres (American (born Cuba), 1957–1996)

A simple string of light bulbs, Untitled (Petit Palais) rejects the monumental and heroic in favor of a quietly personal approach. The sculpture was inspired by lights Felix Gonzalez- Torres saw on Paris streets, and its title comes from the name of a Paris hotel. Made of everyday objects, it is designed to suggest a wide range of meanings, incorporating both the artist's and the viewer's responses and memories and reflecting upon the poignant tension between light's capacity for revelation and transcendence and its inevitable dimming over time. The modest and open-ended quality of the piece is reinforced by the fact that it has no fixed form of its own: the artist stipulated that whoever installed the work was to choose its configuration.

Gallery 276, Modern and Contemporary Art, second floor (Alter Gallery)

Object Details

Title:

"Untitled" (Petit Palais)

Date:

1992

Artist:

Felix Gonzalez-Torres (American (born Cuba), 1957–1996)

Medium:

Light bulbs, porcelain light sockets, and extension cord

Dimensions:

Overall dimensions vary with installation

Classification:

Sculpture

Credit Line:

Gift of the Peter Norton Family Foundation, 1992

Accession Number:

1992-99-1

Geography:

Made in North and Central America

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Gallery 276, Modern and Contemporary Art, second floor (Alter Gallery)

Main Building

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