Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Diagonal Composition no. 2
Jeff Wall Canadian
Not on view
Jeff Wall produced his first photographs in the 1970s by appropriating the traditional languages of history and still-life painting and merging them with the aesthetics of modern advertising photography. Typically, his work explores racial and social inequity and takes the form of large color transparencies in light boxes, like those used to sell cars and other commercial goods. The shallow three-dimensionality, large scale, and spectral seductiveness of this setup imbue the photographs with a surprising sculptural presence. Diagonal Composition no. 2 is one of the artist’s smaller light boxes and it references—perhaps intentionally—Cubist still lifes from the early 1910s and, through that association, Paul Strand’s From the Viaduct seen elsewhere in the show.
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