{"data":{"id":"8275","type":"artwork","attributes":{"id":8275,"topgoose_id":18096,"portfolio_id":null,"tms_id":8275,"title":"Untitled","display_artist_text":"David Hammons","display_date":"1992","accession_number":"92.128a-z","dimensions":"Dimensions variable","medium":"Human hair, wire, metallic mylar, sledgehammer, plastic beads, string, metal food tin, panty hose, leather, tea bags, and feathers\u003cbr\u003e ","department":"collection","classification":"Sculpture","credit_line":"Purchase, with funds from the Mrs. Percy Uris Bequest and the Painting and Sculpture Committee","is_virtual":false,"is_portfolio":false,"portfolio_tms_id":null,"portfolio":null,"edition":null,"publication_info":"","description":"\u003cp\u003eDavid Hammons, \u003cem\u003eUntitled\u003c/em\u003e, 1992. Human hair, wire, metallic mylar, sledgehammer, plastic beads, string, metal food tin, panty hose, leather, tea bags, and feathers\u003cbr\u003e , dimensions variable. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Mrs. Percy Uris Bequest and the Painting and Sculpture Committee 92.128a-z. © 2025 David Hammons / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York\u003c/p\u003e","object_label":"\u003cp\u003eFinding inspiration in the streets and everyday life of the Harlem community where he lived in the early 1990s, David Hammons gathers castoff, ordinary, and ephemeral materials—ranging from fried chicken wings and liquor bottles to dirt and snow—for use in sculptures and performance works. In this untitled sculpture, an array of spiky tendrils seems to sprout from a small bed of smooth stones. A combination of the organic and the manmade, the plant- or spider-like form here is composed of bits of kinked black hair—gathered from the sweepings of barbershops—that are attached to long metal wires. Pieces of hair inevitably fall beneath and around the work, evoking natural processes of change and decay. Like much of Hammons’s art, \u003ci\u003eUntitled\u003c/i\u003e summons an uncanny sensation of the strangeness that often lies just below the surface of the familiar. The work also alludes to vernacular African-American traditions of making art out of whatever is at hand, and the hair suggests the presence of an extended community of countless anonymous individuals who indirectly contributed to its creation.\u003c/p\u003e","ai_alt_text":"A spiky sculpture of dark branches radiating outward from a cluster of round bulbs on the floor.","alt_text":"A cluster of long, bending, caked black rods emerges from a nest of rocks. The rocks sit on a patch of black, ash-like material.","visual_description":null,"on_view":false,"created_at":"2017-08-31T10:20:08.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-06T06:00:13.782-04:00","images":[{"id":99557,"url":"https://whitneymedia.org/assets/artwork/8275/92_128a-z_vw1_cropped.jpg"}]},"relationships":{"artists":{"data":[{"id":"3719","type":"artist"}]}}}}