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Robert Therrien

American, born 1947

No title (yellow hat), 1986

wood, bronze, and enamel

weighted pedestal: 38 1/8 x 5 3/4 x 5 3/4 inches (96.84 x 14.6 x 14.6 cm); overall: 50 1/2 x 12 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches (128.27 x 31.75 x 13.97 cm)

Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

The Panza Collection and George B. and Jenny R. Mathews Fund, by exchange, George B. and Jenny R. Mathews Fund and Charles Clifton Fund, by exchange, 2008

2008:53.64

More Details

Class

Sculpture (visual work)

Work Type

Construction (sculpture)

This information may change due to ongoing research. Glossary of Terms

This hat belongs to a group of works that are mostly recognizable everyday objects. All these works are changed by eliminating their useful parts. The yellow hat appears to vaguely resemble some sort of brimmed hat. Maybe a straw boater. The essential head hole is missing, or the essential void is filled in. There are other works, too, whose functions are rendered useless: a piano without keys, a keyhole which is not a hole at all but a 3-D object, and a chest of drawers or bureau where the open drawer is solid again and the essential container does not exist. There are several versions of this idea in the Albright-Knox’s collection. These are the sorts of things I frequently discussed with Count Panza. (I hope at some point to do a prototypology chart of the different “hats.”)

—Robert Therrien, Los Angeles, California, April 2016