File:Elizabeth King Pupil 1987-90.jpg

Sculpture by Elizabeth King, Pupil (porcelain, glass eyes, carved wood and brass, half life-size, dimensions vary: all joints movable, 1987–90. Collection of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC). The image illustrates a key body of work in Elizabeth King's career beginning in the 1980s: her intimately scaled figurative sculptures, which employ lifelike details such as gently raised veins, creases and wrinkles, functioning joints, and elementary hidden and visible mechanics enabling anatomically correct poses and movements (e.g., spring-loaded elements, magnets, pendulums fiber optics, and hinged doors). The mutability of her figures—in terms of pose and context, across different exhibitions and media is a key component of the sculptures, as in the case of this work, which has been employed in multiple installations, exhibitions, animations and photographs. This work was publicly exhibited in prominent exhibitions, discussed in major art journals and daily press publications and acquired by major museums.

Artist Elizabeth King. Copyright held by the artist.

Elizabeth King (artist)

Detail

Yes

The image serves an informational and educational purpose as the primary means of illustrating a key body of work in Elizabeth King's career beginning in the 1980s, when she turned almost exclusively to figurative sculptures, producing intimately scaled works that she gradually refined by perfecting traditional crafts such as carving, modeling, casting bronze, firing porcelain, woodworking and glass-eye-making. These sculptures employ lifelike details such as gently raised veins, creases and wrinkles, eyebrows composed of King's own collected lashes, hand-blown glass eyes and functioning joints. Their operations involve hidden spring-loaded elements, magnets, pendulums and fiber optics, and visible hinged doors and exposed joints that intentionally break with illusionism. The joints, magnets and components that allow a sculpture to be posed and moved are an essential part of the finished image, with both sculpture and mechanism working equally to represent the alive, moving body. In addition to exhibiting the sculptures, King employs them in animation and photographic works. Because the article is about an artist and her work, the omission of the image would significantly limit a reader's understanding and ability to understand this foundational body of work, which brought King wide recognition through museum exhibitions and acquisitions and coverage by major critics and publications. King's work of this type and this series is discussed in the article and by critics cited in the article.

There is no free equivalent of this or any other of this series by Elizabeth King, and the work no longer is viewable, so the image cannot be replaced by a free image.

The image will not affect the value of the original work or limit the copyright holder's rights or ability to distribute the original due to its low resolution and the general workings of the art market, which values the actual work of art. Because of the low resolution, illegal copies could not be made.