The Label from Hell

Over the Net has a fascination for labels and signs. They can make exhibitions by adding new information and insight or break them with irrelevance and obscurity. Too often museum labels say more about the institution than they do about the work. An OTN cap for the best labels (great or gross). In the meantime this extraordinary example from the Los Angeles County Museum.

Imagine. You see a painting that looks like a man flaying himself. You head toward the label to find out what’s going on and why. Leaning forward you read,

Victor Brauner Romania 1903-1956, active France Suicide at Dawn, 1930 Oil on canvas Purchased with funds provided by Robert and Mary Looker, Lynda and Stewart Resnick, Max and Eleanor Baril Family Trust, Helena and Boyd Krout, Alice and Nahum Lainer, Sheila and Wally Weisman, Herta and Paul Amir, Abby and Alan Levy, Sandra and Jacob Y, Terner, and Bill and Maria Bell through the 1996 Collector’s Committee, and gifts of Richard L. Feigen, New York AC1996.18.1. 703

Whatever story this label is telling, it is sure not the artist’s or the painting’s. It doesn’t even tell you that Brauner was introduced to the Surrealists circle by Yves Tanguy and was included in most of their exhibitions. And you would never know that in the same year he painted Suicide at Dawn, Brauner also painted Self-portrait with enucleated eye, a painting that turned prophetic eight years later when Brauner lost his left eye in a bar brawl with another artist. Biennale fans will be interested to know that Brauner represented France at Venice in 1966. As for what the painting represents, we still have no idea.