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The Holy Bible: Old Testament
The Holy Bible: Old Testament
© David Hammons. Photo by Peter Paul Geoffrion.

The Holy Bible: Old Testament

Artist (Born in Springfield, Illinois, 1943)
Date2002
MediumLeather bound book in case
DimensionsCase: 13 3/8 x 10 1/2 x 2 3/8 inches (34 x 26.7 x 6 cm)
ClassificationsBooks
Credit LineGift of Blake Byrne, A.B.’57
Object number2017.4.8
Collections
  • MODERN & CONTEMPORARY
  • WORKS ON PAPER
Edition165
State9
Label TextThis work is David Hammons’s first limited-edition artist’s book, bound in leather with gold lettering. The book’s spine reads “Holy Bible” and “Old Testament,” but when opened, the interior reveals Arturo Schwarz’s book The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp (originally published in 1969). Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) was a French artist commonly considered the inventor of the readymade, a found object positioned as art. The book is opened to two of Duchamp’s most famous readymades, Bicycle Wheel and Bottle Dryer. Hammons mimics Duchamp’s playful artistic attitude, using a book about him as a readymade itself. In doing so, Hammons both challenges and reaffirms his predecessor’s position in Western art history as the father of conceptual art. Hammons’s use of an “Old Testament” implies Duchamp’s sacred status but also hints that there is more to come.