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Pérez Art Museum Miami
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John Ahearn in collaboration with Rigoberto Torres Double Dutch 1981/2010
© John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres
John Ahearn is part of a generation of artists working in New York in the late 1970s and early ’80s who used the street as their inspiration and sometimes their canvas. Working in sculpture, Ahearn and his longtime collaborator, Rigoberto Torres, focused on local people in the south Bronx, illuminating the aesthetics of everyday life.
Double Dutch is a large-scale example of their collaboration; it captures four girls engaged in double dutch, a popular jump-rope game, particularly in cities, where it can be played in the street. This lively sculpture, which like most of Ahearn’s work was cast directly on the body of the subject, represents each girl’s likeness and connects her to a history of sculptural portraits. Referencing classical busts and monuments, which were typically meant to immortalize the powerful and wealthy, Ahearn instead seeks to celebrate ordinary people, depicting those who would not traditionally have been represented in fine art because of their race, social status, or where they reside. Ahearn and Torres considered their reliefs a form of homage, and the sculptures were often affixed to the facades or sides of buildings in New York as public art. A version of Double Dutch is installed in the Bronx, high on a building wall on Kelly Street.
Identification
Title
Double Dutch
Production Date
1981/2010
Object Number
2014.13a-f
Credit Line
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, museum purchase with funds provided by PAMM’s Collectors Council
Copyright
© John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres
https://www.pamm.org/en/artwork/2014.13a-f
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Physical Qualities
Medium
Enamel and pigmented resin on fiberglass
Dimensions
79 1/2 x 142 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches
Visual Description
Double Dutch by artist John Ahearn in collaboration with Rigoberto Torres is a sculpture cast in fiberglass and painted with enamel and pigmented resin. It measures six and a half feet tall by eleven and a half feet wide and nine and a half inches in depth. Although it is a sculpture it is hung on the gallery wall and projects outward from the wall’s surface.
Double Dutch depicts four figures engaged in a game of double dutch, which the piece is named after. Double dutch is a game where two jump ropes are turned in opposite directions while one or more people jump at the same time. In the sculpture’s depiction of the game there are two figures holding the ropes at either end while two figures are in between.
The figures all appear to be children and are life size. The figure on the left has a brown complexion and has tight braids called cornrows. The figure appears to be a girl and is wearing a pink and white strapless top that is loose fitting, flowing, and ends at her abdomen. She is also wearing blue shorts, white sneakers, and has one foot slightly higher than the other as if also jumping or moving. She is looking at the other figures as her arms extend holding the two jump ropes.
Next to her, moving to the right along the sculpted children, there is a figure who is in the act of jumping the rope. The figure, like the others, appears to be a young girl. She has short black hair and a dark complexion. She is wearing a solid white t-shirt with black shorts. Her legs are bent and pointed toward the other figures while her torso is facing the viewer, implying she might be spinning. Her arms and hands are pointed towards the ground and at her sides.
Moving right again, next to her is the second jumper. She is wearing a red top and matching shorts. She has short black hair. Her back is facing us and she is looking towards the first jumping girl wearing white, to her left. One of her hands is out of view while the other is pointed towards the ground. Her knees are bent in a jumping motion, and like her jumping partner, is barefoot.
The final figure on the furthest right of the sculpture is holding the other end of the jump rope and is wearing a light-yellow shirt with no sleeves and white shorts. Her skin is dark brown. She is looking at the jumping girls and has one foot raised higher than the other as if stomping her foot. The jump ropes not only create an oval, enclosing the two central jumping figures, but also tie all the figures together in a moment of youthful joy.
