E.V. Day
Bombshell
1999
Not on view
Date
1999
Classification
Sculpture
Medium
White crepe dress with monofilament and turnbuckles
Dimensions
192 x 240 x 240 in.
Accession number
2002.318
Series
Exploded Couture
Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Contemporary Painting and Sculpture Committee
Rights and reproductions
© artist or artist’s estate
Bombshell is part of a series of installations entitled Exploding Couture (1999-2002) which represent, according to E.V. Day, female figures “extracting themselves from the props of social conventions.” In each installation, a spectacular evening dress, cut into hundreds of pieces, is suspended in midair by an elaborate system of monofilament lines attached to the floor and ceiling with turnbuckles. The dresses appear to be frozen in the midst of a violent explosion. For Bombshell, Day created an 8-foot-high reproduction of the white halter dress immortalized by Marilyn Monroe in the movie, The Seven Year Itch (1955). This work deliberately confuses sex and militarism, orgasm and detonation, invoking the 1950s epithet for Monroe: blond bombshell.