Amelia Bauer
Toile #1 (Poplar)
2008

About the Item

Toile #1 (Poplar) Edition 3/5 36 x 36 in Archival Pigment Print on Ilford Pearl 2008 Amelia Bauer’s work is a series of discrete investigations into our cultural conceptions of the natural world. Aesthetic traditions are repositioned to create spaces that exist somewhere between our fears of the uncultivated wild and our romanticism of the “virgin” landscape. In this way Bauer explores the American experience of the frontier -- the transitional landscapes at the boundaries of civilization. There is a longstanding tendency in the decorative arts to take elements from nature and organize them into patterns. Walls are built to shelter us from the wild, then decorated with tamed visions of that very thing. The chaos of wilderness is made sane by simplifying and repeating chosen elements. Toile de Jouy is a decorative pattern found on fabrics and wallpapers. A typically white background is covered with a repeated pattern of drawings depicting pastoral vignettes. Floating islands of idyllic countryside feature couples picnicking under trees, or children frolicking in fields. The print was especially popular in America during the Colonial Era. Hawthorn’s portrayal of Colonial America sets out a blatant Puritanical dichotomy in which the town represents is light, day, law, and order, and the forest is home to dark, evil, temptation, anarchy, and sin. These two representations – Hawthorne’s dark natural world, and the dreamlike perfection of nature scenes we find in the Toile de Jouy – reflect a duality that is deeply embedded in the American psyche. Bauer’s Toile Series underscores this dichotomy by creating a space that is both idyllic and foreboding. Using 4,000-watt work lights connected to a generator, islands of rural North Eastern landscape are illuminated and float in the blackness of night. Not unlike the flashlight shining on the trees in the movie The Blair Witch Project, or the edge of the woods caught in the headlights of the mobsters’ car in the opening scene of Goodfellas, it is this limited scope of view that is so unsettling. The spaces in these photographs are devoid of the frolicking couples, and the islands of greenery become stages for potential action.

Creator:
Amelia Bauer (American)
Creation Year:
2008
Dimensions:
Height: 36 in (91.44 cm)Width: 36 in (91.44 cm)
Medium:
Photographic Paper
Condition:
Gallery Location:
New York, NY
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU1162451752
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