The Dwarves without Snow White
1 of 2
Object Label
The Dwarves without Snow White is Polly Apfelbaum’s first velvet piece, made the same year she began directly pouring paint onto her works. The artist considers velvet “the perfect modern material” for its simultaneous elegance and accessibility, folding it atop garment boxes fashioned into pedestals, a down-to-earth translation of fine-art presentation modes. Since the 1970s, women artists have often engaged horizontal forms for their artworks, a deliberate departure from traditional—vertical, phallic—conventions of monumental art.
With the title referring to the moralizing fairy tale of goodness and pureness, here Apfelbaum represents the highly feminine protagonist Snow White among the more colorful, individualized personalities of the male dwarves.
Caption
Polly Apfelbaum American, born 1956. The Dwarves without Snow White, 1992. 8 boxes and lids, stretched crushed velvet, dye, Each: 27 x 15 1/2 x 3 1/2 in. (68.6 x 39.4 x 8.9 cm) Overall: 131 in. (332.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Contemporary Art Council, 1992.113.1a-c-.8a-c. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 1992.113.1a-c-.8a-c_SL1.jpg)
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Artist
Title
The Dwarves without Snow White
Date
1992
Medium
8 boxes and lids, stretched crushed velvet, dye
Classification
Dimensions
Each: 27 x 15 1/2 x 3 1/2 in. (68.6 x 39.4 x 8.9 cm) Overall: 131 in. (332.7 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of the Contemporary Art Council
Accession Number
1992.113.1a-c-.8a-c
Rights
© artist or artist's estate
The Brooklyn Museum holds a non-exclusive license to reproduce images of this work of art from the rights holder named here. The Museum does not warrant that the use of this work will not infringe on the rights of third parties. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions before copying, transmitting, or making other use of protected items beyond that allowed by "fair use," as such term is understood under the United States Copyright Act. For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org. If you wish to contact the rights holder for this work, please email copyright@brooklynmuseum.org and we will assist if we can.
Frequent Art Questions
Can you tell me about this please?
Gladly! The title of this work is "The Seven Dwarves Without Snow White" but you may notice that there are eight squares of fabric.Perhaps Snow White has become one of the dwarves?I think I don’t get it.The artist Polly Apfelbaum drips dye onto fabric, pushing back against the "purity" that is expected of both the title character (Snow White) as well as Modern sculpture, which at this time was dominated by Minimalism and Conceptualism.Another important aspect to consider is that Apfelbaum specified that her work be shown on the floor, not on a tall pedestal. She wanted to push back against expectations of how fine art is presented.She said, “Sculpture sits on the floor, but I wondered what it would mean to have a painting on the floor. It was a support that I thought had been ignored. And it can be an interesting place – a place that belongs to domesticity, the place where your dirty clothes go.”Ah okay. Thanks for that info!Yes! I hope it helps. Many of the works in this exhibition can be challenging, because they were made to push back against the norms and standards that had been established by museums, galleries, and canonical artists (meaning, mostly male artists).
Have information?
Have information about an artwork? Contact us at