The Stonebreakers (All The Objects Needed To Install A Work of Art), 2004-2006 / 2011, trash from jobsite, 96” x 60” x 90”.
Part 1/6 of The Realist Manifesto series.
Gustave Courbet's The Stonebreakers (1848-1850) was destroyed in the firebombings of Dresden in 1945. Its portrayal of an older man and a young boy breaking stones by the side of the road was the first depiction of the proletariat exhibited at the Paris Salon and this validation assisted in establishing Realism as an art historical movement. The painting exists now only as a figment of our imagination. All the objects in the installation are made out of trash I collected over a year period while working as a carpenter on a house in Malibu, CA.
Exhibited at:
“This is not my work”, Murray Guy Gallery, 453 West 17th Street, New York, NY (January 7 - February 11, 2006)
"The Workers", MASS MoCA, 1040 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, MA (May 29, 2011 - April 14, 2012)
"Hi Jack!", Jack Shainman Gallery, 513 West 20th Street, New York, NY (August 2 - September 1, 2012)
Detailed material list:
Hammer: wooden closet rod covered in navy paint, gray silicone caulk, yellow dust mask straps, nails, black dryer belt
Nails and hooks: gold metal carpet threshold
Floor protector: cardboard toilet box, cardboard sink box, brown paper tape
Installer’s gloves: white Tyvek, pink thread
Pencil: yellow tent pole, black electric wire, orange earplug, wood glue
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet, French (1819-77) The Stonebreakers, 1849-50, oil on canvas, 1.59 x 2.56 m, Gemäldegalerie Dresden (missing; presumed destroyed).
There is no more eloquent description of The Stonebreakers than Gustave Courbet’s own written in 1850 in a letter to his friend the art critic, Champfleury:
“[It] is composed of two very pitiable figures: one is an old man, an old machine grown stiff with service and age. His sunburned head is covered with a straw hat blackened by dust and rain. His arms, which look sprung, are dressed in a coarse linen shirt. In his striped vest you can see a tobacco box made of horn and copper edges. At the knee, resting on a straw mat, his heavy woolen pants, which could stand by themselves, show a large patch; through his worn blue socks one sees his heels in his cracked wooden clogs. The one behind him is a younger man about fifteen years old, suffering from scurvy. Some dirty linen tatters are his shirt, exposing his arms and sides. His pants are held up by a leather suspender and on his feet he has his father’s old shoes, which have long since developed gaping holes on all sides. Here and there the tools of their work are scattered on the ground: a basket with leather straps, a stretcher, a hoe, a rustic pot in which they carry their midday soup, and a piece of black bread wrapped in paper. All this takes place in full sunlight, by a ditch alongside a road. The figures are seen against the green background of a great mountain that fills the canvas and across which move the shadows of clouds. Only in the right-hand corner, where the mountain slopes, can one see a bit of blue sky.
I made up none of it, dear friend. I saw these people every day on my walk. Besides, in that station one ends up the same way as one begins. The vine growers and the farmers, who are much taken with the painting, claim that, were I to do a hundred more, none would be more true to life.”
