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Image

Adrian Piper

Food for the Spirit

Description

Maker

Adrian Piper (American, b. 1948)

Title

Food for the Spirit

Year

1971

Medium

  • selenium toned gelatin silver print

Materials/Techniques

Techniques

  • selenium toned gelatin silver print

Materials

selenium toned silver print

Supports

  • fiber based photographic paper

Dimensions

Plate: 36.9 x 37.5 cm (14 1/2 x 14 3/4 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

On verso: signed and dedicated "to Barbara"

Label: On verso of frame, TL corner: Thomas Erben Gallery / 476 Broome St., 2nd fl., New York, NY 10013 phone 212.966.5283 fax 941.0752 / ADRIAN PIPER / FOOD FOR THE SPIRIT (Printer's set-No. 6), 1971 / b/w silverprint, selenium toned / 14.5" x 14.75" (image): 20" x 16" (sheet) / signed and annotated "to Barbara"; verso / Artist's frame.

Identification

State

Printer's set

Credit / Object Number

Credit

Mary B. Jackson Fund

Object Number

2000.97.6

Type

  • Photographs

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Bodies of Evidence
Contemporary Perspectives
Jul 01, 2005 – Sep 25, 2005

Label copy

Searching for a better understanding of her own relationship to the art object, the cultural sphere, and to the world in general, Piper also increasingly made herself the subject of her art. Food for the Spirit, a series of fourteen black-and-white self-portraits shot with a Brownie camera, would represent a turning point for the artist. At the time she began working on the piece, she was writing a graduate course paper on Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. She became “obsessed” with Kantian thought, fasting, practicing yoga, and isolating herself. Fearful that she was losing tough with the physical world - as if she was, in fact, evaporating into a Kantian state of pure reason - she searched for ways of corporeal reassurance. “I rigged up a camera and tape recorder next to [a] mirror,” Piper has written of the process of creating Food for Spirit, “so that every time the fear of losing myself overtook me and drove me to the ‘reality check’ of the mirror, I was able to both record my physical appearance objectively and also record myself on tape repeating the passage in Critique that was currently driving me to self-transcendence.”

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Tombstone

Adrian Piper (American, b. 1948)
Food for the Spirit, 1971
selenium toned gelatin silver print
Plate: 36.9 x 37.5 cm (14 1/2 x 14 3/4 inches)
Mary B. Jackson Fund 2000.97.6

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