Date: Fri 12-Feb-1999

Publication: Bee

Author: JUDIR

Quick Words:

Yale-Whiteread-sculpture

Full Text:

Yale Acquires An Important Sculpture

NEW HAVEN -- The Yale Center for British Art has announced the acquisition of

Rachel Whiteread's "Untitled (Ten Tables)" to its permanent collection.

Ms Whiteread (born 1963) is hailed as the most significant sculptor to emerge

from today's generation of British artists contributing to London's prominence

in the contemporary art world. "Untitled (Ten Tables)," the centerpiece of the

British Pavilion in the 1997 Venice Biennale, is among the artist's most

monumental and ambitious artistic statements to date.

"`Untitled (Ten Tables)' represents Whiteread resoundingly in our collection,"

said Malcom Warner, the curator of paintings at Yale Center for British Art.

"Together with our similarly large-scale work by Damien Hirst, Whiteread's

sculpture will demonstrate the Yale Center's commitment to the best of British

art both past and present.

"In the context of our collection, `Untitled (Ten Tables)' will bring works by

the more formalist `Old Masters' of British sculpture -- Henry Moore and

Barbara Hepworth, [for instance] -- into a fascinating and instructive

dialogue. Additionally, `Untitled (Ten Tables)' will play off the tradition of

cool, geometric abstraction so richly represented in our permanent collection

by Ben Nicholson."

Ms Whiteread is best known for her casts, both in plaster and various other

materials, which are taken from everyday objects and the spaces within and

around them. She gained celebrity in Britain following the controversy over

her "House" project in the East End of London.

For "Untitled (Ten Tables)," Ms Whiteread cast the spaces under ten ordinary,

mass-produced tables to bring an unregistered and forgotten space into the

world. As void becomes solid, what was merely the underside of furniture set

up for a meeting becomes monumental, like a structure of unknown purpose from

a lost civilization.

Ms Whiteread associates "Untitled (Ten Tables)" with the difficult meetings

she had in Vienna in connection with her projected Holocaust Memorial,

meetings that took place around just such an arrangement of tables.

"Untitled (Ten Tables)" will be on view at the Yale Center for British Art,

1080 Chapel Street at York, beginning April 9 in the Entrance Court. The

Center, 1080 Chapel Street, is home to the most comprehensive collection of

British art outside the United Kingdom. Its principal resource is the

collection of British paintings, drawings, prints, rare books and sculpture

given to the university by the late Paul Mellon, Yale Class of 1929.