John Divola
Zuma #4

ExpandFavorite

Images(4)

Artist John Divola (American, born 1949)American, born 1949

CultureAmerican

Titles

Zuma #4
from the series Zuma

Date1978, printed 1979

Place depictedMalibu, California, United States

MediumChromogenic print

DimensionsImage: 9 13/16 × 12 1/16 in. (24.9 × 30.6 cm)
Sheet: 11 × 14 in. (27.9 × 35.6 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by Clinton T. Willour and the Mundy Companies

Object number80.1.5

Not on view

Explore Further

Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionAlthough the physical subjects that John Divola photographs range from buildings to landscapes to objects in the studio, his concerns are conceptual. Divola developed his own combination of performance art, sculpture, and installation, with photography at its conceptual core. For his Zuma series, Divola focused on a Southern California beachfront property that was being used intermittently by the fire department for firefighting practice. As he observed and photographed the building over the course of two years, it was ravaged by fire, vandalism, and the artist’s own graffiti. These acts of human “intervention,” as he saw them, became integrated with the inevitable natural processes of decay.
Provenance[Landweber/Artists, Los Angeles]; purchased by MFAH, 1980.
Exhibition HistoryExhibited: "Pacific Views," the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, March 1 - May 23, 2004
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

signed and dated on verso

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

If you have questions about this work of art or the MFAH Online Collection please contact us.