Fetish
Artist: Clifford Rainey (British | Irish, born 1948)
Date: 1989
Dimensions:
H: 23 3/4 in. (60.3 cm); W: 9 3/4 in. (24.8 cm); Diam: 10 3/8 in. (26.4 cm)
Medium: Recycled cast glass, plate glass, nails; cast and assembled
Place of Origin: London, England
Classification: Glass
Credit Line: Gift of Dorothy and George Saxe
Object number: 1991.101
Label Text:The Coca-Cola bottle, one of the world’s most widely recognized symbols of consumer culture, was originally designed by Earl R. Dean of the Root Glass Bottling Company in Terre Haute, Indiana (later acquired by the Owens-Illinois Company of Toledo). Patented in 1915, it was soon modified into the famous “contour bottle” that is recognized around the world. The Coca Cola bottle has become a running thread throughout much of Irish sculptor Clifford Rainey’s work. Here, the iconic design is transformed into a segmented archetype, abraded and aged to the appearance of an archaeological relic and presented as a festish—an object eliciting unquestioned devotion and respect. The larger-than-life commercial icon is embedded with rusty nails in its cast sections, separated (interrupted) by plate glass shards, in an attempt to “cancel” the powers retained in its familiar shape.
Not on view
In Collection(s)