File:Elise Siegel into.the.room.of.dream dread 2001.jpg

Installation artwork by Elise Siegel, Into the room of dream/dread, I abrupt awake clapping (eight life-size ceramic figures on wooden chairs, overall dimensions variable, 2001, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston). The image illustrates a mid-career body of work in Elise Siegel's art in the 2000s when she turned to clay as her primary medium in figurative sculpture and, especially, installations, as in this work. Installed in heavily curtained, dimmed gallery, the work consists of seven seated children arrayed in a loose circle around another child, in an uncertain place of honor or reproach. Seated upright with tense dangling feet and hands in front of their chests arrested in the act of clapping—excepting the central child—the children tilt their heads inquisitively toward the gallery entrance, mouths slightly ajar in silence. Reviewers noted the piece's eerie reversal of focus—which makes viewers the center of attention, as if they had interrupted a conversation or game at a moment of expectancy or dread—as an effective means of evoking a sense of repression and anxiety associated with childhood. This project and similar works have been publicly exhibited in prominent venues, discussed in major art journals and daily press publications, and commissioned by museums.

Artist Elise Siegel. Copyright held by the artist.

Elise Siegel

Installation view

Yes

The image serves an informational and educational purpose as the primary means of illustrating a mid-career body of work in the mid-1990s and 2000s in Elise Siegel's art after she turned to clay as her primary medium: her sculptures of body fragments and installations of life-size, hollow doll or puppet-like figures, described by one critic as "psychologically complex tableaux of children of curiously ambiguous sexuality." These works were characterized by hand-built figures created with a schematic form of modeling, rotating parts or halved torsos and intentional misalignments, a precise sense of gesture and choreography, and carefully arranged stagecraft, all of which created ambiguous scenes with an uncanny, dreamlike quality. 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 visualize this key developmental phase of her career, which brought widespread recognition through exhibitions in major venues, coverage by major critics in publications and museum commissions. Siegel's work of this type and this work in particular is discussed in the article and by prominent critics cited in the article.

There is no free equivalent of this or any other of this series by Elise Siegel, 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.