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LARRY SULTAN, (American, b. 1946), UNTITLED, chromogenic color print, flush-mounted on board, 167...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:1,000.00 - 1,500.00 USD
LARRY SULTAN, (American, b. 1946), UNTITLED, chromogenic color print, flush-mounted on board, 167...
LARRY SULTAN
(American, b. 1946)
UNTITLED
chromogenic color print
flush-mounted on board
167/16 x 211/4 in. (41.8 x 54 cm)
1989
ESTIMATE: $1,000-1,500
<p>PROVENANCE
Janet Borden Gallery, New York
Private Collection, New York
<p>LITERATURE
Larry Sultan, PICTURES FROM HOME, New York, Abrams, 1992, pp. 64-65 (illustrated)
Part of Sultan's series PICTURES FROM HOME, this image is a film-still extracted from his childhood home movies. The resolution and colors evoke the universal filmstrip movies taken by middle-class Americans, documenting their pursuits of the postwar American dream. PICTURES FROM HOME is a compilation of family snapshots, home movie stills, memorabilia appropriate for a family scrapbook, portraits of the artist's mother and father and texts from the perspectives of the artist, his mother and father.
The various elements in this image possess metaphoric meanings. The car, for example, may be a symbol of escape for its passenger, Sultan's mother, Jean. As the texts reveal, Jean became increasingly restless as a housewife and a mother. Here she sits in an open convertible, riding away from the confinement of suburbia and into a sprawling green landscape. In the text
in Pictures from home, Jean Sultan explains her situation and eventual solution: "I spent most of my days sitting on the curb with neighbors, watching you kids, and gabbing. The husbands would come home and there we were sitting on the curb or on the front lawn pulling up the crabgrass.... [So] in spite of everything your father said about my ability, I finally got my license."