Trockel created what she calls her "knitting pictures" as a response to her perception of a male-dominated art world. By using traditionally feminine resources and techniques, she calls into question an assumed hierarchy of materials, which places painting at the top and craft at the bottom. In this work, knitted wool was stretched on a frame, mimicking the typical way an oil painting on canvas is displayed. A commercial machine was programmed to knit the phrase "Made in Western Germany" into the wool, an allusion to the artist's background and to the commodification of artists and art in a capitalist society.

Gallery label from

Contemporary Galleries: 1980-Now, November 17, 2011-February 17, 2014.

Medium Wool
Dimensions 8' 2 1/2" x 70 7/8" (250 x 180 cm)
Credit Scott Burton Fund
Object number 208.2008
Department Painting & Sculpture

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Rosemarie Trockel

Rosemarie Trockel

German, born 1952 103 works online

German artist Rosemarie Trockel resists easy categorization. Throughout her more than four-decade career, she has worked in a variety of mediums, including sculpture , photography , ceramics , drawings , and the large-scale knitted pictures that brought her fame in the male-dominated art world of the 1980s.

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