Bridget Garnai, Arts Management Intern
In January 2017, the much-anticipated Hatched Baby by Wolfgang Auer was installed in the Miami University Art Museum (MUAM) Sculpture Park. The fiberglass and resin sculpture is on temporary loan from German artist Auer and recently spent a year on display at the Fitton Center for Creative Arts in Hamilton, Ohio. Now the “Blue Baby,” as it became known in Hamilton, has come to college!
Blue Monochrome
1961
Dry pigment in synthetic polymer medium on cotton over plywood
The Museum of Modern Art 618.1967
To find out more about Auer’s art, visit his website and read our first blog post about Hatched Baby. In addition to the size and monumentality of the piece, which was inspired by the anxieties of becoming a new parent, the color blue has some interesting connections with art history. Blue can have connotations of both serenity and sadness and artists from Leonardo da Vinci to Pablo Picasso to Yves Klein have used the color in unique ways. Throughout history, the Virgin Mary in Christian art has often been depicted in blue robes. Picasso had his famous “Blue Period” as he worked through the death of his friend. Yves Klein developed a highly pigmented blue paint for his monochrome paintings known as “International Klein Blue”. Whatever Auer’s motivation might be for using this striking color, it is undeniably eye-catching and invites the viewer to think about some of the other associations that Auer’s work inspires.
Stop by the Miami University Art Museum to see this exciting piece of sculpture! If you take a picture be sure to share it with #BlueBabyMiamiOH. A special thanks to the Fitton Center for Creative Arts, Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park, and the City of Sculpture project for collaborating on the transfer of Wolfgang Auer’s piece to our museum!