Jake & Dinos Chapman
Covered by droit de suite
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"Bring Me the Head of..."
Executed in 1994. Sculpture in fiberglass, wax, paint, wig, 24.8 x 33 cm. Numbered VHS 118/200 and DVD included in lot.
Saleroom notice
Covered by droit de suite.
Provenance
An Important Scandinavian Collection.
Exhibitions
Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm.
Literature
James Roberts, ‘Jake and Dinos Chapman: Ridinghouse Editions, London’, Frieze, issue 24, October 1995, pp.68-9, reproduced p.69 in colour.
Martin Maloney, ‘The Chapman Bros.: When Will I be Famous’, Flash Art, issue 186, Jan./Feb.1996, pp.64-7, reproduced p.66 in colour.
Unholy Libel: Six Feet Under, exhibition catalogue, Gagosian Gallery, New York 1997, reproduced figs xxviii and xxix [pp.118-9] in colour.
More information
Included in the collections of Tate, London and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
As written on Tate's webpage. "Bring Me the Head of is a pornographic film starring two actresses and a sculptural object comprising a realistic model of a severed male head with a penis nose. The Chapman brothers had replaced the man’s nose with the cast of an erect penis, titling the object Bring Me the Head of Franco Toselli! (1995, produced in an edition of twenty-five) in reference to a Milan gallerist. In 1994 Franco Toselli was scheduled to show the Chapmans’ sculptural work Mummy and Daddy Chapman, 1993 – two shop dummies altered with genitalia sprouting all over their naked bodies – but on receiving it, refused to exhibit it. In revenge, the brothers remodelled the head of ‘Daddy Chapman’, substituting a dildo for his nose, and recast it in fibreglass. The sculptural multiple was exhibited at the opening of Ridinghouse Editions in London, where the video film was also subsequently exhibited. In the film the head, manipulated by one or other of the actresses, substitutes for the usual male subject. The women pleasure it and each other repeatedly, playing out male sexual fantasies of insatiable female desire.
Referring to the film, Jake Chapman has commented:
I like the way pornography is like an industrial process of the thing which is the most unmechanical and unindustrial: the sexual act or the acts around the sexual act. Constantly in our work there is an attempt to make an object and run around the other side to watch it, in the same way as anyone else would watch it. That is the most infantile aspect of our work. It is a reflective narcissism. We like to be spectators of our own work. The video is the same thing. We wanted to submit this head to the people who made the video and say ‘We want you to neutralize this object’.
Bring Me the Head of is a Karsten Schubert – Charly Champagne production, directed by Janet Hollywood, edited by The Foul Mesdames and produced by Daina Disney in an edition of 200. Tate’s copy is number 163 in the edition."