Gaskell's imagery is sparked by narratives with gothic or surreal overtones, such as fairy tales or the stories of Frankenstein or Alice in Wonderland. Before making the photographs and films for which she is best known, she often uses drawing to work out what she’s read and imagine her compositions. These pen drawings exhibit the same fragmentation and repetition of the female body that informs her work in other mediums. Their titles recall a reflection by her Surrealist predecessor Hans Bellmer: "The body is like a sentence that invites us to rearrange it, so that its real meaning becomes clear through a series of endless anagrams."
Exquisite Corpses: Drawing and Disfiguration, March 14–July 9, 2012.
Explore more
From MoMA Design Store
Licensing
Artwork or archival images
If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA's collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).
Audio and film clips
MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit Circulating Film and Video Library.
Text from a publication or the archives
If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA's archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].
Feedback
This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please fill out this feedback form.