This work—which is painted anew, directly on the wall, each time it is installed—appears at first glance to be a monumental abstract composition in the style of the Abstract Expressionist “drip” painter Jackson Pollock, or the Venezuelan Op artist Jesús Rafael Soto. A closer look reveals the fragments of another iconic reference: the famous scene in the classic Disney animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), in which the dwarfs march through the forest singing “Heigh-Ho.” As disturbing snippets—a disembodied hand, a pickax—gradually come into focus amid the busy web of red paint drips, the initial cheerful innocence of the cartoon gives way to a sense of foreboding and latent violence, which also runs through both the fairy tale and its film adaptation.
Identification
Title
When Alone Again III
Production Date
2001
Object Number
2005.9
Credit Line
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, museum purchase with funds provided by PAMM’s Collectors Council
When Alone Again III by Arturo Herrera is a large mural artwork, made of latex paint applied directly onto the gallery wall. When installed, it stretches from the floor to the ceiling, as well as to the edges of the surface it is painted on. It completely covers the expansive flat, white surface of the gallery wall it is painted on. Typically, this results in a mural that stretches sixteen feet in height and over twenty-five feet in length when on view in one of PAMM’s smaller galleries.
The mural’s composition is generally an abstracted composition of red paint. The shapes and lines bear no immediate resemblance to anything recognizable. The bright red threads of paint measure about three to four inches in thickness, and extend several yards in long thin strands. Some of them curve and arc gracefully, others are nearly vertical, like long parallel drippings of pigment left to run down a wall. In some areas, the red paint is wider, forming long “islands” of thicker bands of red paint. The red paint is typically very densely applied to the white gallery wall, giving the entire mural a busy and frenetic composition, however, the composition of this mural is not fixed, and changes with every new installation on the gallery wall. The sharp contrast of the white wall against the dripping and vibrant red paint looks like blood splatter.
Seen from afar, the mural betrays its pure abstracted composition. Some of the red lines register as outlines of cartoonishly drawn arms, legs, and hands. Some of these disembodied limbs wield pickaxes. These are the outlines of the dwarves from the “Hi-Ho” scene in the 1937 animated film, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” by Walt Disney.
Arturo Herrera
Arturo Herrera — b. 1959, Caracas; lives in Berlin Artist Page