Thursday, May 5, 2016

This Old House



Every year the Metropolitan Museum of Art has some kind of sculpture installation in their roof garden.  They are always fascinating constructs, and I have photographed two others in the past for the blog.  This is called "Transitional Object (Psycho Barn), "  It is by the British artist Cornelia Parker.  This house first brings to mind the house in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" and then the Edward Hopper painting "House by the Railroad."  I found my reaction to this was immediate - it must be that both of those images are deeply within our psyche.  Everyone on the roof loved this piece and everyone was photographing it.  The brilliant thing about this is the contrast between this iconic house, and the background of the Manhattan buildings.  So here is the other brilliant thing about this construction - it only exists on two sides!  This second photograph shows that the walls of the house are all supported by piping!  The other thing that I learned was that the house in "Psycho" was also built just like this - it only had two sides, and piping held it up!


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you, thank you, thank you for this! Never would have guessed this was just a false front. I would have wanted to walk through to see how this was decorated! What a fun surprise to see something like this - an optical illusion of sorts!

Ken Spencer said...

Thanks for your excitement about this! It was SO COOL to see this in person, especially when I walked around to where I could see the back. It was so amazing to see an old photograph of the Alfred Hitchcock house from "Psycho" and see that it was build the same way!