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26 October 1993

1993 photograph

Field	Value
title	26 October 1993
image	wood_bond.jpg
artist	Henry Bond
Sam Taylor-Wood
year
medium	Photograph
movement	Pastiche
dimensions	23x19 in
dimensions_ref
museum	Tate Modern
city	London
preceded_by
followed_by

Sam Taylor-Wood

26 October 1993 is an artwork created in 1993 as a collaboration between English artists Henry Bond and Sam Taylor-Wood, both of whom were involved in the Young British Artists scene of contemporary art. It is a pastiche or remaking of a well-known photographic portrait of John Lennon and Yoko Ono that was made by Annie Leibovitz a few hours before Lennon's murder.

Production and critical reception

The photo "made a splash in the British art scene in 1993." The work was exhibited as part of the exhibition Brilliant! held at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA, in 1995.

In his 2001 book High Art Lite, art historian Julian Stallabrass states that the Bond/Taylor-Wood version offers a "reversal of gender roles" (however, the original also has Lennon and Ono in the same position). Stallabrass also states that: "The work refers to naïve 1960s idealism, though not entirely mockingly, rather asking the viewer to contrast the situation in the 1990s with the 1960s ... for such artists, it is clear we are living in a time of the twilight of ideals."

Commenting on the photo-work in 2010, Taylor-Wood said: The bizarre thing is that I'd completely forgotten about that piece until it was brought up in an interview ... I don't remember what drove us to make it. Must have been high concept in there somewhere, but God knows what it was. I guess there's a running interest in male vulnerability in my work, so maybe it's just that.

The authorship of this artwork has been contested with both artists, at different times, assuming control of the image and asserting origination/intellectual property; indeed, it has been suggested that the photographer that the pair hired to shoot the photograph also later claimed authorship of it.

The photograph is 23x19 in; on 23 October 2001, the photograph was offered at an art auction held by Christie's Auctioneers as "work number five from an edition of five" and sold for $15,059.

References

Richard Corliss, "[https://web.archive.org/web/20101011224254/http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2024434,00.html Nowhere Boy: Lennon and McCartney Before the Beatles]," Time/CNN, 8 October 2010
(2001). "High Art Lite: British Art in the 1990s". Verso.
Josef Braun, "{{usurped
G.R. Denson,''Going Back to Start, Perpetually: Playing the Nomadic Game in the Critical Reception of Art'', in: 'Parkett', no. 40/41, 1994, p. 153. See, for example, Germano Celant (ed.) ''Sam Taylor-Wood'', Milan: Fondazione Prada, 1998, p. 33, where the image appears attributed to Taylor-Wood; whereas, in Joshua Decter (ed.) ''Don't Look Now'', New York: Thread Waxing, 1994, p. 15, the same photo appears attributed to Bond alone.
(2001). "Sam Taylor-Wood (b. 1967) and Henry Bond (b. 1966)".

Info: Wikipedia Source

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british-contemporary-works-of-art satirical-photographs young-british-artists 1993-works 1993-in-art nude-photography-showing-men 1990s-photographs color-photographs

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