{"data":{"id":"3477","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":3477,"topgoose_id":2551,"tms_id":3477,"display_name":"Sarah Charlesworth","sort_name":"Charlesworth Sarah","display_date":"1947–2013","begin_date":"1947","end_date":"2013","biography":"\u003cp\u003eIn the late 1970s Sarah Charlesworth\nbegan to question the role that photographic\nimages play in shaping perception. This\ncritical standpoint, which she shared\nwith others in a loose-knit group of New\nYork–based artists known as the Pictures\nGeneration, marked a shift in artistic\nfocus away from the linguistic emphasis\nof Conceptualism and the formal reductions\nof Minimalism associated with art of the\n1960s and 1970s. These artists rather began\nto draw on, appropriate, and manipulate\nexisting visual content, hoping, as\nCharlesworth expressed it, to “elucidate\na common cultural experience and\nhow it is depicted in the mass media.”\n\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCharlesworth’s \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/8986\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Arc of Total\nEclipse, February 26, 1979\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e belongs to her\nseries \u003cem\u003eModern History,\u003c/em\u003e which examines how\nphotographic images function within\nthe editorial practices of newspapers. For\nthis particular work, the artist selected as\nher subject front-page coverage from locales\nacross the path of a solar eclipse over\nNorth America. Charlesworth removed all\nwritten language except for the mastheads\nin her actual-sized re-presentations of\nthese twenty-nine newspapers. Although\nthey represent the same spectacle, the\nimages vary somewhat, as do their size and\nposition, depending on the publications’\nphotographers and editors and on the\nrelative importance of the unseen articles\nthat shared the page. The result is a visual\nallegory of how varied media perspectives\ncontribute to an understanding of the\nworld. As Charlesworth remarked: “The\neclipse interested me metaphysically,\nbecause there wasn’t any single image that\nwas consistent, or even any single point\nin time represented. Each town along\nthe eclipse path had its own experience\nof the same event.”\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500056759","wikidata_id":"Q13560755","created_at":"2017-08-30T17:27:08.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-03-30T07:03:59.971-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/3477/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/3477/exhibitions"}}}}