176

 

Drawing (176) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"In the lower left corner, the citation of a drawing from 1956, a sandbox with children and toys, behind it a springboard. Peruvian earth signs are projected from the edge of the box. One can make out the contours of a man swinging his arm and those of a wooden house with four apartments. The house stood in Johnson City, New York, in 1974, and the apartment on the upper left was 'a place in which to weep and wait for the dawn ... reserved exclusively for transients who had no other choice, redbrown with evil insects, walls and bed covered with crawling bedbugs.' This is how Josef von Sternberg described the sleeping quarters at the port of Hamburg, in which the seven-year-old had to wait before crossing to America. A female high diver wearing a one-piece bathing suit penetrates these signs diving headfirst into heavy water, which reflects the inside of the sandbox as an afterimage." (From: arsenal, november 08).

 

(1977)

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