David Hammons

Jack Tilton Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1997

Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Spatiotemporal: Works from the Collection ’88-98, Part I, March - October 1998, n.p., illustrated
Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Extension, September 2002 - March 2003
Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, I'm Still Here, February - December 2014

This work is in excellent condition overall. The taxidermied cat is separate from the drum and shows no signs of wear. The drumhead is taut and well-secured to the wooden base. There is some light soiling, minor wear and fraying and subtle discoloration to the ropes, due to the found nature of the object. There are some minor, faint surface scratches on the drumhead. The wooden drum shell has a few areas of minor splitting to the wood, with some minor lifting, inherent to the medium. There is a small, white linear accretion noted on the lower part of the wooden shell at the foot of the drum
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"Conceptual artist, environmental sculptor and social commentator, Mr. Hammons fashions from the artifacts of his urban surroundings a strange and rather wonderful kind of poetry."
Michael Kimmelman, "Giving Voice to the Ephemera of the Urban World," The New York Times, May 19, 1989

Throughout a five-decade career of eluding categorization and defying art world protocols, David Hammons consistently produces context-sensitive works that pose the question of identity–of his own, of the African American experience and of art. Conceived in 1996 with a good deal of spontaneity and indelible wit, the arresting sculpture Standing Room Only is an exemplary instance of Hammons’ continuous reworking of the association between materials, objects and their connotations, all centered around the themes of the commercialism and divisive nature of high art and societal struggle.

Composed of a taxidermy cat resting on top of a native African drum, Standing Room Only is assembled and exalted from a group of found objects. Such artistic approach is deeply rooted in the art historical canons of assemblage, notably calling to mind Duchamp’s ‘ready-made’ approach that has influenced art since its inception. On the other hand, it is Hammons’ unique and joking take on the commercialism rampant in the contemporary world. An alarmingly simple gesture of assemblage investigates the conversation and oppositional forces involved in today’s world–class, race, globalization, poverty, wealth–and where the black culture fits amid these forces. “[Hammons’] translation of humble materials into poetic forms yields his art’s essential character as content-driven abstraction, spiritual food for the soul.” (Exh. Cat., New York, Zwirner & Wirth, David Hammons: Selected Works, 2006, n.p.) Through the use of found material, the artist perhaps is constructing a portrait of himself, one that is layered with self-consciousness, irony and the dignity of his itinerant artist-shamanism, or in other words, a kind of dignified “homelessness.” Throughout his oeuvre, Hammons’ self-fulfilling mystique–conjuring spirits with chicken parts, strands of human hair, bottles of cheap wine, decorated basketball hoops–is always accompanied by his reading of black cultural identity and its past heritage as he in turn deconstructs stereotypes and re-contextualizes materials.

Hammons has lived and worked in New York City since 1974, and his experiences there have critically informed the foundation of his oeuvre, permeated by a highly charged and omnipresent cultural critique. Hammons’s appropriation of the prosaic vernacular of trash and construction sites radically and blatantly challenges conventional hierarchies. The resulting ruffled layers destabilize hierarchies between waste and luxury, elevating the discarded material to the realm of high art and attacking the elevated preciousness of painting.