Martha Rosler
Patio View

Titles

Patio View
from the series Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful

Date1967–1972, printed later

MediumInkjet print

DimensionsImage: 23 5/8 × 19 7/8 in. (60 × 50.5 cm)
Sheet: 24 × 20 in. (61 × 50.8 cm)
Frame: 25 × 21 × 1 1/2 in. (63.5 × 53.3 × 3.8 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by Marion Mundy

Object number2011.641

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionMartha Rosler, in her influential series Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful, critically points out a sharp divide between the warfront in Vietnam and a private home in America by utilizing images found in popular magazines such as Life, Newsweek, and House Beautiful. Rosler made visible the symbolic collision of the two realms by using the technique of photo-collage and by changing the original context of each image. In this work, Rosler collaged a magazine photograph of two elegant chairs on the patio of a typical American home with an image of tanks and fallen combatants on a war-torn street in Vietnam. A curtain at the edge of the patio, drawn open like a theater curtain, suggests a critical divide between spectacle and spectators. Patio View can also be interpreted as a feminist statement of the late 1960s, when women were often confined in a domestic space in American society, witnesses but not participants in the reality of the war abroad.
Provenance[Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York]; purchased by MFAH, 2011.
Exhibition History"Utopia/ Dystopia: Construction and Destruction in Photography and Collage," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 11 March - 10 June, 2012.

"WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath," The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 11 November, 2012 - 3 February, 2013.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

Printed labels on verso back board:
Martha Rosler (American, born 1943) / Patio View / 1967 - 1972 / Photomontage / 50.8 x 61 cm (20 x 24 in.) // Courtesy the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York / E.38.07.11 / Worcester Art Museum / 55 Salisbury Street / Worcester, MA 01609 / Phone:508-799-4406

WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and / Its Aftermath / The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston / 2011.641 / Martha Rosler, American // Patio View / 1967-72 / Photomontage /// 34. Remembrance // The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston / Brooklyn Museum of Art / Corcoran Gallery of Art

Framer's labels, lower right

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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