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JULIE MOOS (American, b. Canada, 1965) HAT LADIES Fredericks Freiser Gallery label on back of eac...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:20,000.00 - 30,000.00 USD
JULIE MOOS (American, b. Canada, 1965) HAT LADIES Fredericks Freiser Gallery label on back of eac...
JULIE MOOS
(American, b. Canada, 1965)
HAT LADIES
Fredericks Freiser Gallery label on back of each frame with print information signed by artist
14 mounted chromogenic color prints
each: 40 x 52 in. (101.6 x 132.1 cm)
2000-2001
each print is number 4
from an edition of 5
ESTIMATE: $20,000-30,000
Enron has agreed to allow this group of works to be exhibited April 24-
July 24, 2004 at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida and would hope that the purchaser honors the agreement.
PROVENANCE
Fredericks Freiser Gallery, NEW YORK
LITERATURE
Robert Hobbs, JULIE MOOS: HAT LADIES, BIRMINGHAM, Birmingham
Museum of Art, 2002, cover and pp. 17, 19, 21-27, 29, 31, 32, 34 and 35
(each illustrated)
These fourteen portraits by Julie Moos were taken of members of the New Pilgrim Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, located in the African-American community of Ensley. The entire series consists of eighteen photographs of thirty-one women. Elias Hendricks, Jr., formerly on the board of the Birmingham Museum of Art, where twelve of these works were exhibited in 2002, invited Moos to photograph the women he affectionately described as “hat sisters.” The project honored these unsung leaders of his church community, who attended services in elegant dresses and matching theatrical hats. The hats were often meant to outdo those of the other congregants and became a ritualistic means to glorify their heavenly Savior, according to Robert Hobbs (Robert Hobbs, JULIE MOOS: HAT LADIES, p. 10). Hendricks and Hobbs both argue that these women, veterans of the Civil Rights movement, adorned themselves as a literal representation of the song of thanks and victory, “I Got Freedom Over My Head.”
Moos accepted the invitation and began to photograph these women in a makeshift studio in the hallway of the sanctuary. She shot them before and after services for eight consecutive Sundays. As in previous series by Moos, the subjects are typically paired to suggest a connection and dialogue between the women. They are consistently posed against a neutral background so as not to distract the viewer from their dresses, expressions and, most importantly, their hats. These hats are sometimes worn with a distinctive tilt known as “hattitude.” These women seem to revel in the friendly, but fierce, competition with their partners. Robert Hobbs speaks in depth about the relationship between the paired women: “The majesty of each figure is challenged by the adjacency of its peer since the partner’s appearance reveals the elaborate masquerade that the two are indeed constructing. One hat lady connotes individuality, two imply a collaboration, and a series of pairs indicates an ongoing practice… making them subscribers to a specific cultural norm, a set of known rituals” (Robert Hobbs, JULIE MOOS: HAT LADIES, p. 13).