Representations of Everyday Objects

Shoes, cups, cans, sinks and furniture made into art, where ordinary things are isolated, enlarged, copied or made strange.

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Common things become strange when art isolates them. Vincent van Gogh painted a battered pair of work boots in Shoes (1886), and Meret Oppenheim covered a cup, saucer and spoon with gazelle fur in Object (1936), turning a teatime set into something unsettling. Marcel Duchamp went further with Bottle Rack (1914), presenting a mass-produced object as art.

After 1950 ordinary things took centre stage. Jasper Johns cast and hand-painted two ale cans in Painted Bronze (1960), making a near-perfect copy of throwaway packaging. In Britain, Patrick Caulfield painted lamps, jugs and wine bottles in flat colour with thick black outlines. Robert Gober began making handmade plaster sinks in the 1980s, with no taps or plumbing, and Robert Therrien built a table and chairs at giant scale in Under the Table (1994), so that visitors walk beneath them like small children.