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Bird of Paradise
Bird of Paradise
Bird of Paradise

Bird of Paradise

Artist (American, born 1940)
Date1980
Mediumdye diffusion prints (Polaroid Polacolor II)
DimensionsImage: 24 1/4 × 20 1/2 in. (61.6 × 52.1 cm)
Support (1): 30 × 22 in. (76.2 × 55.9 cm)
Support (2): 26 × 21 1/2 in. (66 × 54.6 cm)
ClassificationsPhotograph
Credit LineGift of Betty Hahn, 2014
Object number2014.5.1
DescriptionBotanical composition with two stalks with Bird of Paradise blooms against a sheet of paper with botanical illustrations of the flower and its parts.
Text Entries
Hahn added images to her series Botanical Layout from 1978-80 and 1988, creating a group of about thirteen different images (see “Betty Hahn, Photography or Maybe Not,” 1995). This piece is one of the latest in the series.
Playing off against the classic romantic overtones of floral subject matter, Betty Hahn instead creates a more clinical examination of flowers in her Botanical Layout series. Working at a time when many female artists were revisiting crafts and subject matter traditionally associated with women, Hahn tackles the delicate realm of flowers with a clinical eye. Placing them in a scientific context, the artist removes their symbolic and decorative overtones to create both an instruction manual and a memento mori.
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