Artwork Page for To Die upon a Kiss

Details / Information for To Die upon a Kiss

To Die upon a Kiss

2011

Fred Wilson

(American, b. 1954)
Culture
America
Medium
Murano glass
Measurements
Overall: 177.8 x 174 x 174 cm (70 x 68 1/2 x 68 1/2 in.)
Weight: 220 lbs. fully installed (weight verified by CMA 2/24/2021)
Credit Line
The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund 2012.115
Copyright
© Fred Wilson
This artwork is known to be under copyright.
Location
Not on view
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Did You Know?

Wilson’s chandeliers are the first black chandeliers ever to be created in the history of Venetian glassmaking.

Description

“To die upon a kiss” are the dying words of Othello, the Black general in William Shakespeare’s play Othello, set in the 1500s in Venice, Italy. Long interested in the overlooked histories of the African diaspora and, in this work, people from Africa living in Venice, Fred Wilson began his series of sculptural chandeliers in 2003 when he represented the United States at the Venice Biennale (the premiere international survey of contemporary art occurring every two years). Like the complex histories they reference, these works are embedded with seeming contradiction: they are heavy yet fragile, dark yet luminous. Wilson describes his chandelier series, which he creates from Italian glass made on the island of Murano, as “a meditation on death, on Blackness, on beauty.”
A glass chandelier with two levels, one black, one white, features stylized flowers curving up from a central point with candle flame-shaped lights extending from the center of each flower. The lower black level transitions into the slightly narrower white level through ornate gray foliage before the white continues to extend in roughly pyramid-shaped foliage toward the ceiling. Roughly spinning-top-shaped ornaments hang from the bottom and edges of each level.

To Die upon a Kiss

2011

Fred Wilson

(American, b. 1954)
America

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