DE ARCHITECTS
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S-699
year 1938
material other
source title Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design 1924–Today
info The surrealist use of bones as material in connection with war and destruction becomes evident in Wolfgang Paalen’s 1938 bone pistol Le Genie de l’Espece, dating from the eve of the Second World War. In this work, chicken bones simulate the shape of the deadly weapon in the moulded trough of a velvet-lined pistol casket. Cause and effect seem to be coalesced in a matrix - the bones, arranged as a fantastic firearm, present death as the deliberate intention and inevitable result of the use of weaponry and are thus meant as an unmistakeable warning of conflict resolution by force. Reissued 2017.
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year 1938
material other
source title Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design 1924–Today
info The surrealist use of bones as material in connection with war and destruction becomes evident in Wolfgang Paalen’s 1938 bone pistol Le Genie de l’Espece, dating from the eve of the Second World War. In this work, chicken bones simulate the shape of the deadly weapon in the moulded trough of a velvet-lined pistol casket. Cause and effect seem to be coalesced in a matrix - the bones, arranged as a fantastic firearm, present death as the deliberate intention and inevitable result of the use of weaponry and are thus meant as an unmistakeable warning of conflict resolution by force. Reissued 2017.
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