Artwork Page for The Creaking Chair

Details / Information for The Creaking Chair

The Creaking Chair

1926, printed 1980

Ralph Steiner

(American, 1899–1986)
Culture
America
Medium
gelatin silver contact print
Measurements
Paper: 10.2 x 12.7 cm (4 x 5 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Therese and Murray Weiss 2012.78
Copyright
© Estate of Ralph Steiner
This artwork is known to be under copyright.
Location
Not on view
Print

Description

A single wall advertises theater pieces likely to attract different audiences: The Creaking Chair, a mystery play offering “thrills, shudders, and laughs”; The Half-Caste, a story of love and sacrifice set in Samoa; and The Immortal Hour, a fairy-tale opera. The fragmentary view of construction equipment is a reminder that, like Broadway’s offerings and the posters plastered on walls, the city itself was constantly changing in the 1920s. Growth in population and an overheated economy sparked a construction boom.
A vertically oriented black-and-white photograph depicts a wall of layered, torn posters. Top left, a woman with wide eyes and an open mouth appears on a poster for "The Creaking Chair." A dark, diagonal beam with a serrated edge slashes across the frame from the right. At the bottom left, a pulley and cables overlap an advertisement for "The Half Caste." Jagged paper fragments reveal textured brickwork throughout the decaying composition.

The Creaking Chair

1926, printed 1980

Ralph Steiner

(American, 1899–1986)
America

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