Seated Portrait
Bea Nettles, Seated Portrait, 1970, photographs on linen, hand colored and machine stitched, housed in hinged wooden box with velvet covers, Gift of the Artist, © Bea Nettles, 2011.74.1
This work is not currently on view.
- Title
Seated Portrait
- Artist
- Date
1970
- Medium
photographs on linen, hand colored and machine stitched, housed in hinged wooden box with velvet covers
- Dimensions (H x W x D)
each image: 10 1/16 in x 7 15/16 in
- Collection Area
Photography
- Category
Photographs
- Object Type
photograph
- Culture
American
- Credit Line
Gift of the Artist
- Accession Number
2011.74.1
- Copyright
© Bea Nettles
- Terms
In 1970, the same year that Bea Nettles was denied access to her graduate school’s darkroom because of her unorthodox approach to photography, the artist’s double self-portrait was chosen for inclusion in the landmark Photography into Sculpture exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The young Nettles’s machine-stitched and toned, boxed images represented a new experimental thread that gained credibility during the late 1960s, as traditional concepts of the photographic image were challenged. No longer relegated to the gallery wall, photography moved to the pedestal and the floor, functioning as three-dimensional sculpture that explored and exploited new technologies. The double-portrait on display here is the only existing variant of the MoMA piece.
- Exhibitions
2012 Emerging: New Photography Acquisitions Portland Art Museum
2023 Throughlines: Connections in the Collection Portland Art Museum
