Portrait of a Chicken as an Egg within a Golden Rectangle
Hope Sandrow with Ulf Skogsbergh Portrait of a Chicken as an Egg II within a Golden Rectangle
2013 Unique Inkjet print on cotton 71" x 44"
Thursday, October 25, 2018
This egg, created by a Shinnecock Family Flock Hen, references the style of framing drawings and portraits in “vignettes” popular in the Victorian period. The longtime association between Chickens and Humans as a primary source of food is an epoch-defining role as key fossil evidence for the dawn of the age of the Anthropocene in which humankind came to dominate the planet. Domesticated 10,000 years ago, chickens are now a global presence of 20 billion.
In art and in culture, eggs are a vital ingredient in “albumen prints” and “tempera.” The monumental size of the print references the practice of pop artists. The proportions of a golden rectangle realize the classical Greek idea of harmony.
In the study of evolution: recent scientific studies prove that a bird’s embryo responds to events outside their shell: “Even Unhatched, Birds Exchange Survival Skills. Eggs vibrate in response to parental alarm calls, then pass on the warning to nearby eggs.... and in return receiving cues from nearby unhatched siblings.”
"...the problem about the egg and the hen, which of them came first, was dragged into our talk, a difficult problem which gives investigators much trouble. And Sulla my comrade said that with a small problem, as with a tool, we were rocking loose a great and heavy one, that of the creation of the world."
Plutarch, Table Talk, Moralia 120 AD
A Hen lays an Egg after light-sensitive cells behind her eyes message her ovary to release an ovum into the egg yolk. Fertilized by sperm, coated by albumen, encased in a shell as the egg travels through the oviduct. This creative process encompasses twenty-four hours; as the rotation of Earth on its axis.
Hope Sandrow - spacetime