The Stonebreakers (All The Objects Needed To Install A Work of Art), 2004-2006 / 2011, trash from jobsite, 96” x 60” x 90”. Part 1/6 of The Realist Manifesto series.
Gustave Courbet's The Stonebreakers (1848-1850) was destroyed in the firebombings of Dresden in 1945. Its portrayal of an older man and a young boy breaking stones by the side of the road was the first depiction of the proletariat exhibited at the Paris Salon and this validation assisted in establishing Realism as an art historical movement. The painting exists now only as a figment of our imagination. All the objects in the installation are made out of trash I collected over a year period while working as a carpenter on a house in Malibu, CA.
