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David Hammons

Rock Head, 2000

Now On View

Description

Maker

Title

Rock Head

Year

2000

Medium

Stone, hair, metal stand

Materials/Techniques

Materials

Dimensions

35.6 x 27.9 x 12.7 cm (14 x 11 x 5 inches)

Type

Credit

Helen M. Danforth Acquisition Fund

Object Number

2001.31.1

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Raid the Icebox Now with Simone Leigh

October 18, 2019 - December 12, 2020

The hair in this work by David Hammons was gathered from the floors of African American barbershops. By presenting Rock Head in this gallery as part of her installation The Chorus, artist Simone Leigh encourages comparisons to other portraits nearby—for example, the head of a man (2289–2246 BCE) in the case to the right—and underscores its timeless simplicity despite its humble materials. By positioning Hammons’s work with her sound installation, Simone Leigh heightens its evocation of African American historical perseverence through the words of sculptor Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, writer Saidiya Hartman, and historian Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts.

Modern and Contemporary Galleries

In Rock Head, David Hammons affixed afro-textured hair to a stone to create an unconventional sculptural portrait. This and similar sculptures developed from performances the artist gave in the 1970s in Harlem, in which he gave haircuts to similar objects made using human hair sourced from African-American barbershops. These works are representative of Hammons’s transformative use of recovered materials and references to the human body to evoke visual tropes of black identity.

Related

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Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in Copyright. This object is Rock Head with the accession number of 2001.31.1. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.