Vices and Virtues: evening view showing "AVARICE" "TEMPERANCE" "FORTITUDE" "ANGER"
Creator
Stuart Collection (San Diego, Calif.) Rittermann, Philipp Scholz (American photographer, 1955 CE-) Nauman, Bruce (American sculptor, photographer, and performance artist, born 1941)
Under copyright Constraint(s) on Use: This work is protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.). Use of this work beyond that allowed by "fair use" requires written permission of the UC Regents. Responsibility for obtaining permissions and any use and distribution of this work rests exclusively with the user and not the UC San Diego Library. Inquiries can be made to the UC San Diego Library program having custody of the work. Use: This work is available from the UC San Diego Library. This digital copy of the work is intended to support research, teaching, and private study.
Rights Holder and Contact
Rittermann, Philipp Scholz (American photographer, 1955 CE-)
Description
Sculpture and Installations Architecture and City Planning Nauman's Vices and Virtues for the Stuart Collection consists of seven pairs of words superimposed in blinking neon, which run like a frieze around the top of the Charles Lee Powell Structural Systems Laboratory. Seven vices alternate with seven virtues: FAITH/LUST, HOPE/ENVY, CHARITY/SLOTH, PRUDENCE/PRIDE, JUSTICE/AVARICE, TEMPERANCE/GLUTTONY, and FORTITUDE/ANGER. Here, atop a laboratory where engineers erect and then stress parts of buildings to test their resistance to earthquakes, this cataclysmic list of moral opposites, created long ago, takes on special significance. The virtues flash sequentially clockwise around the building at one rate; and the vices circulate counterclockwise at a slightly faster rate. At brief intervals, both the seven virtues and the seven vices flash together. The progression of the two repeating cycles playing off each other allows all possible combinations of the words to be displayed. This complicated performance, generated by the mechanical sequencing of a simple moral dichotomy, dramatizes the instability of any ethical judgment. As Nauman implies in this work, we may know the difference between faith and lust, or hope and envy, but in real experience these vices and virtues are never experienced purely. They continually show themselves in new and baffling combinations. The letters are seven feet high and placed over glass windows six stories up. Each letter is a combination of two colors, with a total of fourteen colors and nearly a mile of neon tubing. This work, first proposed in 1983, was completed and erected in October of 1988. "Bruce Nauman wandered the campus with us and we were trying to remember what the 7 Vices and 7 Virtues were. We spotted the Mandel Weiss Theater at the southern edge of campus and thought that would be the perfect place to put them in neon. Neighbors who could see the theater were not in favor of "neon in the neighborhood". When this building, the Powell Structures Lab, centrally located on the campus interior, went up we looked at it and decided it too could be the perfect place. Bruce agreed. " - Mary Beebe, Stuart Collection Director UC San Diego Library, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0175 (https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/contact) Charles Lee Powell Structural Systems Laboratory: University of California, San Diego; La Jolla, California, United States
Type
image
Format
Neon tubing; 7 feet (height of each letter)
Form/Genre
light art installations (visual works) neon sculpture
Identifier
ark:/20775/bb32097998
Language
No linguistic content
Subject
Ethics (concept) Humor Visual and Verbal Communication Irony Religious ethics Advertising Conceptual American University of California, San Diego--History Light art Installations (visual works) Neon sculpture
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