Vernon Fisher
Movements Among The Dead

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Artist Vernon Fisher (American, 1943–2023)American, 1943–2023

CultureAmerican

Titles

Movements Among The Dead

Date1990

Made inFort Worth, Texas, United States

MediumOil, blackboard, and chalk on wood support

Dimensions83 × 92 1/4 × 9 1/4 in. (210.8 × 234.3 × 23.5 cm)

Credit LineGift of The Barrett Collection, Dallas, Texas

Object number2007.1478

Not on view

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Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Object Type

PAINTING

DescriptionVernon Fisher is the most prominent artist to bring a Postmodernist sensibility to Texas art. He explores narrative forms using images and text with a remarkable sense of poetry and an endless appetite for formal experimentation. Movements among the Dead is from a series of blackboard paintings that combine found and trompe l'oeil (fool-the-eye) imagery. Fisher is drawn to the blackboard, a familiar classroom tool, because of its ability to both record and erase quick notations and doodles. For Fisher, the blackboard represents the instability of meaning; it functions as a repository for conflicting and overlapping memories, emotions, and recollections. Fisher visualizes these thought processes by replicating the chalky erasure residue.

ProvenanceThe artist; Nona and Richard Barrett, Dallas; given to MFAH, 2007.
Exhibition History"Second Nature: Contemporary Landscapes from the MFAH Collection," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, July 10–September 25, 2011.

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