Artwork
Untitled
Untitled is a photographic photography by Joseph Wackerle. It is held in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The work is a black‑and‑white photograph printed on paper and mounted on a green card.
About this work
Overview
The work is a black‑and‑white photograph printed on paper and mounted on a green card. It records a sculptural figure—a nude male standing on a circular pedestal, clutching an implement in his hands, with a jug positioned at his feet. The image forms part of a larger archive of photographic documentation of early twentieth‑century sculpture.
Subject & Meaning
The sculpted figure presents a bare male form in a poised stance, suggesting a narrative of labor or ritual. The tool he grasps may indicate a specific craft or symbolic function, while the jug at his base introduces an element of domesticity or offering, inviting interpretation of the work’s thematic concerns.
Technique & Style
The photograph captures the three‑dimensional sculpture with careful attention to light and shadow, emphasizing the contours of the nude body and the texture of the pedestal. The mounting on green card provides a contrasting background that isolates the image, a common archival practice for clarity and preservation.
History & Provenance
The image entered the collection through the bequest of William Kineton Parkes in 1938. Parkes, a novelist, art historian, and librarian noted for his scholarship on sculpture, gathered the photograph as part of a series of responses he solicited from sculptors during the 1920s. The bequest now resides in the Archive of Art and Design.
Context
The photograph reflects Parkes’s broader project of documenting contemporary sculptural practice in the interwar period. By distributing questionnaires to artists and collecting visual records, he created a resource that illuminates the material culture and artistic concerns of British sculpture in the early twentieth century.
Artist & collection
Artist
Joseph Wackerle was a German sculptor. His work was also part of the art competitions at the 1928 Summer Olympics and the 1932 Summer Olympics.
