At left, 2015 photograph of CHILD prior to conservation treatment. At right, CHILD after treatment in January 2016. All images courtesy of MoMA, New York
Bruce Connor’s sculpture, CHILD, done in 1960 in response to the execution of Caryl Chessman, has been quietly falling apart for 50 years. It has long been thought to be outside of restoration abilities. It has now been restored, and is on exhibit. The full story of the restoration is fascinating, and I’m glad to see this disturbing and thought provoking piece back in the public eye.
Since its acquisition nearly half a century ago, the exhibition Bruce Conner: It’s All True marks the first time CHILD has ever been exhibited at MoMA. Details of the restoration are here.
Via The Creators Project.
That’s really disturbing. I mean the artwork. Well done on the restoration, that wasn’t easy!
Oh yes, it’s disturbing. Caryl Chessman made a lot of waves during his prison time, and the case is still controversial to this day. The law at the time could not enact the death penalty for Chessman’s crimes, so there was a lot of twisting and perverting of the law, and Chessman was loopholed into the gas chamber.
I was barely toddling in 1960, but the case was talked about long after that, and I remember people bringing it up and talking about it. I expect most people don’t know much about it now, or not much, at any rate. It’s one of the most blatant cases of a perversion of justice in the history of uStates. For people who were older than me at the time, it was an intensely disturbing case, and it’s easy to see how Child was born of it.
Yeah, I had to google the name. I’m pretty sure a quick skim of the wikipedia synopsis does not do justice to what actually happened. :/
Judging from the Wikipedia article, the work is at least as disturbing as it should be, there were so many levels of dysfunction and failure, personal and societal.
Ice Swimmer @ 4:
Yes, it’s quite a number of case studies on dysfunction.