Ambitious Resident from the Blue Boy Set

Copied Howard Kottler, Ambitious Resident from the Blue Boy Set, 1969, porcelain, silver, and applied decals, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Howard Kottler Testamentary Trust, 1991.194.4A

Artwork Details

Title
Ambitious Resident from the Blue Boy Set
Artist
Date
1969
Location
Dimensions
1 1⁄4 x 10 7⁄8 in. (3.2 x 27.6 cm.) diam.
Credit Line
Gift of the Howard Kottler Testamentary Trust
Mediums
Mediums Description
porcelain, silver, and applied decals
Classifications
Keywords
  • Architecture — vehicle — carriage
  • Figure male
Object Number
1991.194.4A
Linked Open Data
https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1991.194.4A

Artwork Description

Howard Kottler began to decorate mundane household objects with mass-produced decals at the end of the 1960s. When he first began his series of plates, he made them for himself, but abandoned that process for factory-made products. In Ambitious Resident from the Blue Boy Set, Kottler cut apart the image of Jonathan Buttall from Sir Thomas Gainsborough’s famous 1770 painting, Blue Boy, and placed the pieces into two carriages, employing a collage method like the Dada artists of the 1920s.