2009.52.A-B: Liar's Brank

Identification and Creation

Object Number

2009.52.A-B

People

Nayland Blake, American (New York born 1960)

Title

Liar's Brank

Classification

Sculpture

Work Type

sculpture

Date

1993

Culture

American

Persistent Link

https://hvrd.art/o/331552

Physical Descriptions

Medium

leather, aluminum and wood

Dimensions

64.8 x 94 x 127 cm (25 1/2 x 37 x 50 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History

Nayland Blake, created 1993, New York. Private collection, New York. John Silberman gift; to Harvard Art Museum, 2009.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of John Silberman (HLS '76) and Elliot Carlen (HBS '77)

Accession Year

2009

Object Number

2009.52.A-B

Division

Modern and Contemporary Art

Contact

am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu

Permissions

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Descriptions

Commentary

Nayland Blake's wall mounted sculpture Liar's Brank is an early incarnation of the artist's ongoing exploration of his sometimes alter ego, sometimes iconic representation of the rabbit. Here depicted through a vaguely ominous mask with S/M associations and a tree branch shaped somewhat like a divining rod. The rabbit appears on and off throughout Blake's now 20 year long career. Sometimes the rabbit connotes a high developed sex drive, sometimes the cartoonish prat falls of Walt Disney's Bugs Bunny and sometimes the African American folk tradition of Br'er Rabbit. All of these associations are meant, however contradictorily so, providing Blake's oeuvre with a layered set of meaning and connotations in the overlapping fields of sexuality and race. His continued deployment of the motif of the rabbit can also be seen as the creation of a kind of self mythology in the tradition of Joseph Beuys, although rather then a self aggrandizing heroic narrative we are continually offered instead a version of masculinity and/or the artist in a state of benign disrepair.

Blake is known for his witty sculptures, almost all of which appear to be created out of almost negligible materials. Working in the readymade and assemblage tradition, he transforms the mundane objects of everyday life into just barely legible sculptures, by which I mean his transformation of the everyday is never heroic, but rather often flirts with, and revels in, the pathetic and low nature of his materials. In this regard, he can be seen in concert with artists such as David Hammons and Jim Hodges.

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