A black and white photograph with an imprinted drypoint spider web.

Untitled (Web 4)

Artist Vija Celmins (American, born 1939)

Publisher Gemini G.E.L. (American, founded 1966)

Date2002

Mediumphotogravure with burninshing and drypoint on Hahnemühle copperplate paper

DimensionsImage: 15 1/2 × 19 1/4 inches (39.4 × 48.9 cm)
Sheet: 20 1/2 × 24 1/2 inches (52.1 × 62.2 cm)
Framed: 23 1/8 × 27 inches (58.7 × 68.6 cm)

Credit LineKirk Varnedoe Collection, Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia, Gift of the artist.

Object number2006.8

On View

Not on view

Copyright© Vija Celmins. The images and text contained on this page are owned by Telfair Museums or used by the Museum with permission from the owners. Unauthorized reproduction, transmission or display of these materials is prohibited with the exception of items deemed “fair use” as defined by U.S. and international copyright laws.Label Text"Maybe I identify with the spider. I'm the kind of person who works on something forever and then works on the same image again the next day." -VIJA CELMINS Born in Latvia in 1939, Vija Celmins immigrated to the United States with her family at the age of 10. Her study of art began at the John Herron Institute in Indianapolis, where she earned her BFA, and continued at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she received her MFA in painting. After discarding her early interest in the work of the New York Abstract Expressionists, Celmins has been rendering nature imagery from black and white photographic sources since the 1960s, exploring the same subjects repeatedly in paintings, drawings, and prints. Rather than depicting sweeping, panoramic views, Celmins’s natural scenes isolate a small slice of the landscape, presenting it to the viewer outside of its normal context. In all of her work, Celmins has shown herself to be most interested not in the meanings of the objects she depicts, but in the process of rendering a three-dimensional object or scene on a two-dimensional canvas or sheet of paper. During the time of this artwork’s making, Celmins engaged herself in a series of prints depicting spider webs, of which Untitled (Web 4), in the Kirk Varnedoe Collection, is a part. The series celebrates the intricacy and fragility of the gossamer webs created by arachnids.

Collections