Porcelain and wood
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/hannah-wilke-11355" aria-label="More by Hannah Wilke" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Hannah Wilke</a>
Elective Affinities
Partial purchase with funds provided by Tate Americas Foundation, Tate International Council and an anonymous donor (Tate) and partial gift of Marsie, Emanuelle, Damon and Andrew Scharlatt, Hannah Wilke Collection & Archive, Los Angeles (Tate Americas Foundation) 2021
<p><span>Elective Affinities </span>is a large floor sculpture made by Hannah Wilke in 1978. It comprises four low platforms which can be set out in a grid or in a line; on these platforms are arranged a series of 86 white glazed porcelain ceramic sculptures. Formed by folding sheets of clay, the sculptures look abstract from most angles but also suggest bodily shapes, specifically labial folds and vaginal cavities. The individual units are arranged in a serial configuration, in grids of 3 by 3, 4 by 4, 5 by 5 and 6 by 6, and decrease in size from the 3 by 3 grid to the 6 by 6 grid, with each grid occupying roughly the same surface area of the platform.</p>
sculpture porcelain wood
20 November 2015 – 12 March 2017
2017-03-12
20 November 2015 – 14 February 2016
2016-02-14
2015-11-20
Tate Liverpool (Liverpool, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/
23 March 2016 – 11 September 2016
2016-09-11
2016-03-23
MMK 2 Museum für Modern Kunst (Frankfurt, Germany)
22 October 2016 – 12 March 2017
2017-03-12
2016-10-22
Centre Pompidou, Metz (Metz, France)
2015-11-20
An Imagined Museum: works from the Pompidou, Tate and MMK collections
Exhibition
20 November 2015 – 27 March 2017
2017-03-27
23 March 2016 – 11 September 2016
2016-09-11
2016-03-23
MMK 2 Museum für Modern Kunst (Frankfurt, Germany)
21 October 2016 – 27 March 2017
2017-03-27
2016-10-21
Centre Pompidou, Metz (Metz, France)
2015-11-20
An Imagined Museum: works from the Pompidou, Tate and MMK collections
Loan-out
16 February 2019 – 31 January 2021
2021-01-31
16 February 2019 – 31 January 2021
2021-01-31
2019-02-16
Tate Liverpool (Liverpool, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/
2019-02-16
Max Ernst
Collection based display
4 June 2021 – 16 January 2022
2022-01-16
4 June 2021 – 16 January 2022
2022-01-16
2021-06-04
Pulitzer Arts Foundation (St. Louis, USA)
http://www.pulitzerarts.org/
2021-06-04
Hannah Wilke
Loan-out
Elective Affinities
Overall display dimensions variable
Partial purchase with funds provided by Tate Americas Foundation, Tate International Council and an anonymous donor (Tate) and partial gift of Marsie, Emanuelle, Damon and Andrew Scharlatt, Hannah Wilke Collection & Archive, Los Angeles (Tate Americas Foundation) 2021
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<p>
<i>Elective Affinities </i>is a large floor sculpture made by Hannah Wilke in 1978. It comprises four low platforms which can be set out in a grid or in a line; on these platforms are arranged a series of 86 white glazed porcelain ceramic sculptures. Formed by folding sheets of clay, the sculptures look abstract from most angles but also suggest bodily shapes, specifically labial folds and vaginal cavities. The individual units are arranged in a serial configuration, in grids of 3 by 3, 4 by 4, 5 by 5 and 6 by 6, and decrease in size from the 3 by 3 grid to the 6 by 6 grid, with each grid occupying roughly the same surface area of the platform. </p>
<p>Wilke had been making works with vaginal forms since the 1960s, such as <i>It Was a Lovely Day</i> 1964, and throughout the late 1960s had been in dialogue with other artists who were using or rejecting overt bodily imagery. Wilke’s early sculptures tended to be single forms; by the early 1970s, she was presenting such forms as repeated elements in a work, for instance in <i>176 One-Fold Gestural Sculptures </i>1973–4 which comprises 176 elements arranged in a large rectangle on the floor. These multi-part works began to establish a dialogue with process sculpture being made in New York at the time and the repeated forms in the work of Eva Hesse (1936–1970; such as <i>Schema </i>1967–8) and Joel Shapiro (born 1941; such as <i>One Hand Forming / Two Hands Forming </i>1971). <i>Elective Affinities</i> continued the dialogue with process sculpture, but the arrangement on low platforms in four different sized grids also suggests links with the minimalist sculpture of Carl Andre (born 1935) and the notion of ‘seriality’, theorised by the artist Mel Bochner (born 1940) in his essay of 1967 ‘The Serial Attitude’. </p>
<p>Though Wilke had worked with terracotta and clay before, <i>Elective Affinities</i> was her first use of a white glaze; <i>176 One-Fold Gestural Sculptures </i>had been painted pink, a colour which made the bodily resonances of the forms more explicit. The use of white glaze meant <i>Elective Affinities </i>was somewhat ‘cooler’ as a work, which also tightened the connection to minimalism and its chromophobia. However, in contrast with the literal, descriptive title of the earlier <i>176 One-Fold Gestural Sculptures</i>, Wilke gave the 1978 work a very allusive one, naming it after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel of 1809. In invoking Goethe’s exploration of the connection between chemical affinities and human romantic relationships, Wilke invited her viewer to consider questions about desire and affinity between substances and people. Her decision to use this title has been seen as marking the impact of the end of her relationship with the artist Claes Oldenburg (born 1929) (see Tracy Fitzpatrick, <i>Hannah Wilke: Gestures</i>, Neuberger Museum, New York, 2010)</p>
<p>When describing such works, Wilke also associated their forms with bodily sensations: ‘When you make love and have an orgasm, you experience it in waves, so to me that’s like these sculptures: very luscious, very beautiful and opening – opening up in gentle waves, like flowers.’ (Quoted in ibid., p.35.) Just as <i>Elective Affinities </i>introduces forms evocative of the body into a configuration associated with minimalism, so <i>Untitled </i>crosses the language and materials of post-minimal sculpture with a sensual poetics of the body. </p>
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<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>Cornelia Butler, <i>WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution</i>,<i> </i>exhibition catalogue, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles 2007.<br/>Nancy Princenthal, <i>Hannah Wilke</i>,<i> </i>Munich and New York 2010.<br/>Tracy Fitzpatrick, <i>Hannah Wilke: Gestures</i>, Neuberger Museum, New York, 2010</p>
<p>Mark Godfrey<br/>May 2014</p>
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Summary
2024-01-22T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT