![Robert Heinecken, Bed Pan, circa 2002, stainless steel [2 component pieces], 12 1/4 x 9 x 4 in.…](/internal/media/dispatcher/19829/preview)
![Robert Heinecken, Bed Pan, circa 2002, stainless steel [2 component pieces], 12 1/4 x 9 x 4 in.…](/internal/media/dispatcher/19829/postagestamp)
![Robert Heinecken, Bed Pan, circa 2002, stainless steel [2 component pieces], 12 1/4 x 9 x 4 in.…](/internal/media/dispatcher/19829/full)
Bed Pan
Artist
Robert Heinecken
(American, 1931 - 2006)
Datecirca 2002
MediumStainless steel [2 component pieces]
Dimensions12 1/4 x 9 x 4 in. (31.1 x 22.9 x 10.2 cm)
ClassificationsSculpture
Credit LineGift of Joyce Neimanas, 2012
Object number2012.25.1
DescriptionThe piece is made of two commercially manufactured hospital pans: a stainless steel Vollrath kidney-shaped emesis basin inserted inside a Vollrath bedpan.Text Entries
Perhaps it is no surprise that an artist known for his humor and inventiveness would make a sculpture using two stainless-steel hospital pans. The piece owes a debt to the early twentieth-century conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp, who famously declared that commercially made objects such as a snow shovel and a urinal as art. Made during the last few years of Heinecken’s life, this construction was most likely created in response to the shiny, sensuous (and even sexual) forms of these utilitarian objects, but it is also perhaps a commentary on illness.
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