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Yinka Shonibare, MBE, The Swing (after Fragonard) 2001
© Yinka Shonibare, courtesy Stephen Friedman Gallery, London
Summary
The Swing (after Fragonard) is an installation in which a life-size headless female mannequin, extravagantly attired in a dress in eighteenth-century style made of bright African print fabric, reclines on a swing suspended from a verdant branch attached to the gallery ceiling. Beneath her, a flowering vine cascades to the floor. The figure is static, poised at what appears to be the highest point of her swing’s forward trajectory. Her right knee is bent, while her left leg stretches out in front of her, causing her skirts to ride up. She appears to have just kicked off her left shoe, which hangs mid-air in front of the figure, suspended on invisible wire.
Yinka Shonibare’s The Swing (after Fragonard), made in Sheffield in 2001, is based on an iconic Rococo painting by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Swing (Les hazards heureux de l’escarpolette), 1767 (Wallace Collection P430), which depicts an aristocratic young woman in a frothy pink dress sweeping through a garden on a swing. In her abandon, she has kicked off one tiny pink shoe; Fragonard catches the moment the shoe arcs through the air. The woman is watched by two men; one pushes her from behind a tree, while the other lies in the foliage beneath her, precisely and mischievously placed to look up her billowing skirts… (read more)
Yinka Shonibare’s The Swing (after Fragonard), made in Sheffield in 2001, is based on an iconic Rococo painting by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Swing (Les hazards heureux de l’escarpolette), 1767 (Wallace Collection P430), which depicts an aristocratic young woman in a frothy pink dress sweeping through a garden on a swing. In her abandon, she has kicked off one tiny pink shoe; Fragonard catches the moment the shoe arcs through the air. The woman is watched by two men; one pushes her from behind a tree, while the other lies in the foliage beneath her, precisely and mischievously placed to look up her billowing skirts… (read more)
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