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84 Sparrows
Artist
Vernon Fisher
(Born 1943, United States; died 2023, United States)
Date1979
MediumAcrylic and graphite on laminated paper
DimensionsOverall: 69 x 176 in. (175.26 x 447.04 cm)
Credit LineCollection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum purchase, The Benjamin J. Tillar Memorial Trust
Object number1982.2
Status
Not on viewCopyright© Vernon Fisher
Category
Label TextVernon Fisher has been juxtaposing images and text in his art since the 1970s. His work mixes a broad range of media (painting, sculpture, photography, and language) and a variety of images (from Romantic landscapes to the Dairy Queen marquee). For him, disparate image and text fragments compete for attention yet seem to find a common meaning.
84 Sparrows, 1979, is one of the artist’s early “narrative” works, made up of three parts. The center panel, an unstretched canvas tacked to the wall, features the image of a parked camper. Around the camper, the artist has laid a story that is collaged together from several seemingly disconnected sentence fragments. The text begins, “I am crouched behind the camper holding my arm down between my legs. Blood streams from under my shirt sleeve and down my wrist and off the tips of my fingers.” This text/image panel is flanked on the left by cutout, hand-painted birds attached directly to the wall. The right panel consists of a blown-up Nancy cartoon that shows Nancy and her aunt mixing cake batter when a brick or stick of butter unexpectedly flies into the picture, splattering cake mix over their faces.
The three components of 84 Sparrows present us with a fluid, uncertain narrative space that nonetheless creates iconic, often humorous connections between art and life: the bright red flecks of blood in the story relate to the red birds, which might be red smears that are echoed in the dark splatters on the faces of Nancy and her aunt. The final sentence of the narrative provides what could be considered the conceptual theme of all of Fisher’s narratives: “Is this how it ends or what?”
84 Sparrows, 1979, is one of the artist’s early “narrative” works, made up of three parts. The center panel, an unstretched canvas tacked to the wall, features the image of a parked camper. Around the camper, the artist has laid a story that is collaged together from several seemingly disconnected sentence fragments. The text begins, “I am crouched behind the camper holding my arm down between my legs. Blood streams from under my shirt sleeve and down my wrist and off the tips of my fingers.” This text/image panel is flanked on the left by cutout, hand-painted birds attached directly to the wall. The right panel consists of a blown-up Nancy cartoon that shows Nancy and her aunt mixing cake batter when a brick or stick of butter unexpectedly flies into the picture, splattering cake mix over their faces.
The three components of 84 Sparrows present us with a fluid, uncertain narrative space that nonetheless creates iconic, often humorous connections between art and life: the bright red flecks of blood in the story relate to the red birds, which might be red smears that are echoed in the dark splatters on the faces of Nancy and her aunt. The final sentence of the narrative provides what could be considered the conceptual theme of all of Fisher’s narratives: “Is this how it ends or what?”