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Contemporary Art

Untitled #750 (Bird Wedding Cake)

Petah Coyne

Courtesy of the donor

Object Label

Petah Coyne’s early work incorporated decaying materials—fish, logs, roots, and hay—into sculptures that plumbed extremes of fantasy and the macabre, interiors and the outdoors, joy and alienation. By 1993, Coyne adapted her materials to ensure her work’s longevity and to draw from her family’s Irish Catholic traditions, as reflected in the artificial flowers and birds, white satin, and up to 150 layers of candle wax in Untitled #750 (Bird Wedding Cake). Seemingly fragile in its creation and hanging display, the work is weighted by its materials and metaphors, which allude to the deceptive fantasies of femininity and marriage seen from the vantage point of white American girlhood.

Caption

Petah Coyne (American, born 1953). Untitled #750 (Bird Wedding Cake), 1993. Wax, wire mesh, steel, metal chain, artificial flowers (silk?), artificial birds, white fabric (satin?), overall: 38 x 32 x 32 in., 260 lb. (96.5 x 81.3 x 81.3 cm, 117.9kg). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Rothfeld Family Collection in memory of Harriet Weill Rothfeld and Designated Purchase Fund, 2008.17.2. © Petah Coyne, Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York. (Photo: Courtesy of the donor)

Gallery

Not on view

Title

Untitled #750 (Bird Wedding Cake)

Date

1993

Medium

Wax, wire mesh, steel, metal chain, artificial flowers (silk?), artificial birds, white fabric (satin?)

Classification

Sculpture

Dimensions

overall: 38 x 32 x 32 in., 260 lb. (96.5 x 81.3 x 81.3 cm, 117.9kg)

Credit Line

Gift of the Rothfeld Family Collection in memory of Harriet Weill Rothfeld and Designated Purchase Fund

Accession Number

2008.17.2

Rights

© Petah Coyne, Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York

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. 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

  • Tell me more.

    Petah Coyne self identifies as a "lapsed Catholic." Her work explores her complicated relationship to beauty, femininity and death.
    When she first moved to NYC, she worked with terminally ill patients, used taxidermied birds in her creations and even dead fish on occasion.
    Thank you.

  • Tell me more.

    This is an example of the wax sculptures Coyne was working on between 1990 and 2004.
    Coyne says that she forces herself to "change continuously. I always have to invent a new language."

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Artists and makers

Petah Coyne

5 works in the collection