NEHMA | Collection - Power Failure

Bruce Conner

American
(1933–2008)

Power Failure
1964

Assemblage on pressed board
65.25 x 49.5 x 3 in.
Gift of the Marie Eccles Caine Foundation
2000.3

Bruce Conner assembled POWER FAILURE while residing in Brookline, Massachusetts. The piece is typical of Conner’s ad hoc constructions, with random bits of found industrial and prefabricated material scattered across the surface. The upper portion of the work is covered with battered pieces of roofing paper, while the lower portion is veiled by an old wire window screen. A fragment of gold fabric with fringe, glass shards, and bits of rope oats in the lower right corner, alongside a piece of plastic wrap marked with the letter A and a red rose. Skirting the upper and lower halves of the window screen are multicolored bundles of electrical wires placed near a lightbulb socket wrapped with string.

The inclusion of the wrapped string and the image of a rose connect the work directly to Marcel Duchamp’s use of premade materials, and obliquely to his alter ego Rrose Sélavy. Conner had attended a lecture by Duchamp in the fall of 1963 at Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum entitled “Apropos of Myself.” Conner brought to the lecture a ball of white string, along with a glass-and-metal box from Mexico City with a rubber name stamp placed inside. (Between 1961 and 1965 Conner did not sign his work, instead using a rubber name stamp, or forgoing a signature entirely.) During the lecture Conner wrapped the box with string in a performance that paid homage to Duchamp’s surrealist installation 16 Miles of String (1942); afterward he presented the box to Duchamp as a gift for their mutual friend, the gallerist Charles Alan.

Marissa Vigneault

Keywords
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This object has the following keywords:

assemblage, chain, electric fixtures*, rope, steel wool*, window screens*, wire

assemblage
chain
electric fixtures - Lighting fixtures that use electricity to provide illumination.
rope
steel wool - A matted mass of long, fine steel fiber, especially used for cleaning and polishing surfaces.
window screens - Refers to ornamental devices of any kind, especially grilles or lattices, fitted into window openings. In the United States the term more specifically refers to screens of mesh designed to be put across window openings to admit air while excluding insects.
wire

Exhibition List

This object was included in the following exhibitions:

Uses of the Real I , 1/20/2008 - 4/30/2011
Uses of the Real Part II , 7/1/2009 - 8/30/2010
Independent & Creative Impulse: Dialogues from the Collection , 8/16/2011 - 5/9/2014
ReImagine|ARTsySTEM: Expanding Ideas of Artistic Response to Environment , 6/9/2015 - 7/23/2015
Collecting on the Edge Part I , 9/15/2018 - 12/15/2018
Collecting on the Edge , 9/15/2018 - 5/4/2019
Collecting on the Edge Part II Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art , 1/17/2019 - 5/4/2019

Also found in

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This object is a member of the following portfolios:

Collecting on the Edge

Collecting on the Edge Part II

Sculptures

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Bruce Conner