Label TextTony Cragg worked as a laboratory technician before attending art school, and there often seems to be a nod to these beginnings in his sculpture. Cragg's Order combines two motifs-the three-lobed body of a trilobite (a marine fossil) and a vessel from a laboratory. By enlarging the primordial trilobites from their usual 1.5 inches in length to a larger-than-human scale, we experience them as if through a microscope-gigantic and threatening. There is a palpable tension in the hybridized form of the marine fossil with the beaker, resulting from the mixture of the ancient and primitive with the advanced. The sculptures also evoke feelings of unease, suggesting disease, engineering, and evolution gone wrong, which is reinforced by the multiple meanings of the word "order". It refers specifically to the biological classification system (life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species), but also implies phrases such as "natural order" or "order of things", and its antonym - disorder, which these unruly creatures embody.
Published References"John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park", Lea Rosson DeLong, ed., Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa, 1923, pp. 50-51, deatils, pp. 52, 53
Published References"John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park", Lea Rosson DeLong, ed., Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa, 1923, pp. 50-51, deatils, pp. 52, 53
DimensionsOverall (a): 60 × 58 × 55 in., 1571 lb. (152.4 × 147.3 × 139.7 cm, 712.6 kg.)
Overall (b): 38 × 57 × 69 in., 1268 lb. (96.5 × 144.8 × 175.3 cm, 575.2 kg.)
Overall (b): 38 × 57 × 69 in., 1268 lb. (96.5 × 144.8 × 175.3 cm, 575.2 kg.)
Accession Number 2015.10.a-.b
Classificationssculpture
CopyrightARS
Provenance(Marian Goodman); John and Mary Pappajohn [Purchased from previous, 1989]; Des Moines Art Center [Gift from previous, 2015]
Images (1)
Audio (3)
