Bust

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Bust

Edition: Ed. 3/5, 2 APs

Flora Mayo and Alberto Giacometti, with the bust she made of him, circa 1927. Photographer unknown. Original photograph belonging to Flora Mayo, kept under her mattress, lost. Film negative missing. Reproduction from only known duplicate print, archive of Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur. Original clay bust portrait of Alberto Giacometti by Flora Mayo, lost. Reconstructed and cast in brass.

2017
Installation Art
Silver gelatin print and brass sculpture with concrete base
Framed silver gelatin print: 34 1/2 × 28 1/2 in. (87.63 × 72.39 cm) Brass sculpture with concrete base: 60 1/2 × 19 × 21 in. (153.67 × 48.26 × 53.34 cm)
Gift of the artists and Lora Reynolds Gallery (M.2019.28a-c)
Contemporary Art
Not currently on public view

Curator Notes

Bust is an integral part of Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler’s double-sided, 30-minute film installation Flora (see also Collections Online for M.2019.29), which spotlights the life of Flora...
Bust is an integral part of Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler’s double-sided, 30-minute film installation Flora (see also Collections Online for M.2019.29), which spotlights the life of Flora Mayo, a previously unknown American artist with whom the renowned Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti had a love affair while she was studying in Paris in the 1920s. Mayo is mentioned only fleetingly in the widely disseminated Giacometti biography by James Lord, first published in 1985 , in which Lord ignored her identity as an artist. A 1927 photo of the two artists together in Paris, flanking a portrait bust by Mayo of Giacometti, sparked Hubbard / Birchler’s curiosity and subsequent detective work to locate any trail of her life and art and restore her to history. Bust, is a reconstruction of the now-lost sculpture that Mayo created of Giacometti and a photographic reproduction of the faded image published in Lord’s biography of Giacometti. Bust stands as a testament to the work that Mayo created during her years in Paris; by exhibiting the recreation of her sculpture alongside their film, Hubbard / Birchler call attention to Mayo’s artistic practice and the poignancy of her work that no longer exists.The artists bring Mayo’s compelling biography to life through a feminist perspective that interweaves reconstruction, reenactment, and documentary into a hybrid form of storytelling.
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Bibliography

  • Hubbard, Teresa, and Alexander Birchler. Flora Redux. Santa Fe, NM: Radius Books, 2020.