Artist
Matthew Mann
Title
Leaning Hotbox
Date2014
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions30 × 24 in. (76.2 × 61 cm)
Framed Size: 34 × 27 3/4 in. (86.4 × 70.5 cm)
Framed Size: 34 × 27 3/4 in. (86.4 × 70.5 cm)
Credit LineDC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Art Bank Collection
Object numberDCCAH2020.028.1
ClassificationsPaintings
Locations
District Department of Transportation (250 M Street SE)
DescriptionThe subject of this painting is the Villa Doria Pamphili in Rome, Italy. The artist was attracted to the building’s Palladian style architecture and also the fact that it was built over a smaller villa in the 17th century and was the subject of a Vanity Fair article describing the Pamphili family’s squabbles over inheritance of the villa. The composition was executed from a smaller oil study the artist made on the photograph from the article. Mann’s work is equally reverential and subversive: he both admires the artists and architects that he appropriates and, by combining them in a spatially and atmospherically disjointed way, aims to make a commentary on capitalism’s fraught relationship with the visual arts. In this way, Mann intends his paintings to address art, history, politics and culture at large.
