God
Morton Livingston Schamberg, American, 1881 - 1918, and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, German, 1874 - 1927.
Date:
c. 1917Medium:
Wood miter box; cast iron plumbing trapDimensions:
Height: 12 3/8 inches (31.4 cm) Base: 3 x 4 3/4 x 11 5/8 inches (7.6 x 12.1 x 29.5 cm)Curatorial Department:
American ArtObject Location:
1950-134-182Credit Line:
The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950
c. 1917Medium:
Wood miter box; cast iron plumbing trapDimensions:
Height: 12 3/8 inches (31.4 cm) Base: 3 x 4 3/4 x 11 5/8 inches (7.6 x 12.1 x 29.5 cm)Curatorial Department:
American ArtObject Location:
Currently not on view
Accession Number:1950-134-182Credit Line:
The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950
Label:
In 1900 American writer Henry Adams contrasted the dynamo engine to the Virgin Mary as the icon of a new age, and in 1930 American poet Hart Crane would salute the Brooklyn Bridge as the altar of a new God. Consisting of an inverted household plumbing trap mounted on a wooden miter box, this construction offers a more tongue-in-cheek eulogy to the machine. Members of the New York Dadaists, Morton Schamberg and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven used irony and irreverence to topple artistic conventions. God shares a spiritual kinship with Marcel Duchamp’s notorious Fountain of 1917, a porcelain urinal turned on its side, and invokes Duchamp’s equivocal praise of plumbing and bridges as America’s greatest contributions to civilization.
In 1900 American writer Henry Adams contrasted the dynamo engine to the Virgin Mary as the icon of a new age, and in 1930 American poet Hart Crane would salute the Brooklyn Bridge as the altar of a new God. Consisting of an inverted household plumbing trap mounted on a wooden miter box, this construction offers a more tongue-in-cheek eulogy to the machine. Members of the New York Dadaists, Morton Schamberg and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven used irony and irreverence to topple artistic conventions. God shares a spiritual kinship with Marcel Duchamp’s notorious Fountain of 1917, a porcelain urinal turned on its side, and invokes Duchamp’s equivocal praise of plumbing and bridges as America’s greatest contributions to civilization.
