Urs Fischer: The Public & the Private

This exhibition at the Legion of Honor –  and the first under a new “contemporary art initiative” – may be regarded as either an unnecessary disruption or as a sorely needed break from tradition by viewers this summer.

Even the artist said he felt like a “space ship with a glitch in the software,” when he spoke to the press this morning.

Urs Fischer (Swiss, b.1973) was invited to bring a contemporary perspective to our understanding and appreciation of the Museums’ permanent collection, specifically the acclaimed collection of Rodin sculptures.

We were also particularly impressed by his chilling work, Lead & Tin, 2016, picture here (courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.)

Exhibition copywriters capture the sensation well:

Taking the place of Peter Paul Rubens’s The Tribute Money (ca. 1612), which previously hung in this location, Lead & Tin is a double image featuring the portrait of a female vampire superimposed with a ghostly, translucent mask without eyes and mouth that both veils and highlights her expression beneath. It is part of a larger series of works (including Drained [2016] in Gallery 6) dedicated
to the undead monsters that play such a dominant role in today’s cultural—especially cinematic—imagination.

Fischer’s seductive, double-faced vision plays with society’s anxious relationship with and attempts to escape death. Replacing Rubens’s painting of Christ defending the imposition of taxes as a just demand of an earthly ruler, Lead & Tin associates the vampire’s promise of eternal life with another form of tax, one paid for in blood.