To Each Concrete Man
1974crylic, pencil, wood, paper, raw leather, vinyl, canvas, metal, light bulbs and electric wire
These photos, taken by Ree in her studio, contain elements of her work To Each Concrete Man. They likely show test set-ups of different parts of the art work, like the latex floor and roughly painted walls with colour stripes.
In preparation for To Each Concrete Man Ree made several small sculptures, such as a human-like wooden figure with its characteristic thin legs (left), and tree slices with leather and small legs (right).
This sketch shows how Ree envisioned the floor of the platform for To Each Concrete Man.
Ree developed the installation To Each Concrete Man site specifically to the large exhibition space on the ground floor of New York’s Whitney Museum. In these photos one can see the entrance of the space with 'Ree Morton' inscribed on the rough concrete wall.
Ree and her good friend Cynthia Carlson took many photos of To Each Concrete Man in 1974. They also documented how visitors carefully observed the lamp sculptures in the work.
This detail clearly shows the original floor of To Each Concrete Man’s platform, with its artificial latex stones. In a 1974 interview–the same year the installation was developed– Ree mentioned she found the floor by chance, and that it was a reaction to the heavy stone floor at the Whitney Museum. She thought it was funny that one could sort of punch the soft latex
stones.
Here one can clearly see that Ree has circled a strip of paper on a wall of the installation witha pencil.
After Rees' death in 1977 the New Museum in New York organised the first extensive solo exhibition of her work, opening in 1980 . To Each Concrete Man was also shown in this retrospective, and Rees' flags from Something in the Wind were installed right next to it.