ID: 700008386 Page link: http://vocab.getty.edu/page/cona/700008386	Record Type: Movable Work
Images: 1 2

The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems (installation (visual work); Martha Rosler (American video artist, performance artist, an...; 1974-1975; Whitney Museum of American Art (New York City, New York stat...; 93.4a-x)

Note: In her work, Martha Rosler has often employed—and deconstructed—photographic conventions in ways that examine the authenticity associated with documentary photography and the unbalanced relationship between disenfranchised communities and their visual representations. Here, Rosler uses a combination of images and texts to respond to earlier documentary photographs of vagrants and alcoholics in Manhattan’s run-down Bowery neighborhood. Criticizing what she regards as documentary photography’s diminished power to motivate change, Rosler juxtaposed photographs of Bowery storefronts with shots of typewritten words associated with drunkenness. The resulting disjunction—between words that refer to an all-too-human state and images devoid of people—suggests the inherent limitations of both photography and language as “descriptive systems” to address a complex social problem. By arranging the work’s component parts in a grid, Rosler disrupts the traditional idea that a work of art, hanging by itself in a museum, is to be approached simply as an object of beauty.

Titles:

The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems (preferred,C,U,undetermined,U,U)

Catalog Level: item

Work Types:

installation (visual work) [300047896] (preferred)

..... (Objects Facet, Visual and Verbal Communication (hierarchy name), Visual Works (hierarchy name), visual works (works), <visual works by material or technique>)

Classifications:

performance art (preferred)

photographs

Creation Date: 1974-1975

Creator Display:

Martha Rosler (American video artist, performance artist, and critic, born 1943) [preferred,VP]

artist Rosler, Martha (American video artist, performance artist, and critic, born 1943) [500097623]

Locations:

Current: Whitney Museum of American Art (New York City, New York state, United States) [500303638] Corporate Bodies (Corp. Body)

Repository Numbers: 93.4a-x

Credit Line: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Purchase, with funds from John L. Steffens

Display Materials: Forty-five gelatin silver prints of text and image mounted on twenty-four backing boards

	gelatin silver process [300139114]
	.......(Activities Facet, Processes and Techniques (hierarchy name), <processes and techniques by specific type>, <image-making processes and techniques>, <photography and photographic processes and techniques>, photographic processes)

	backing boards [300261430]
	.......(Objects Facet, Furnishings and Equipment (hierarchy name), Tools and Equipment (hierarchy name), equipment, <equipment by process>, bookbinding equipment)

Dimensions: 30 x 60 cm (each); 45 prints

Cultures:

American (preferred)

General Subject:

various subjects (preferred)

Specific Subjects:

	Manhattan [7022657]
	.....(New York City (inhabited place), New York state (state), United States (nation), North and Central America (continent), World (facet)) (TGN)

Edition: 2/5

List/Hierarchical Position:

..... Movable Works

.......... Movable Works by class: decorative and utilitarian works

Sources and Contributors:
The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems	........ [VP]
	........ Whitney Museum [online] (2009-) accessed 10 April 2014

Subject: ....... [VP]

....................... Whitney Museum [online] (2009-) accessed 10 April 2014, http://collection.whitney.org/object/8304

Note:
English	..... [VP]
	..... Whitney Museum [online] (2009-) accessed 24 February 2018, http://collection.whitney.org/object/8304