Biography

New York artist Dan Basen worked in assemblage in the 1950s and 1960s, responding directly to the proliferation of mass production in the post-war boom. He used common objects—supermarket goods, matchsticks, hardware, and craft supplies—compiling them into open-faced boxes or rectangular grids. In the tradition of the readymade, Basen removed mass produced objects from their original intended use, highlighting their materiality and establishing a new order, or control over the object. Basen’s work has been compared to that of the French Nouveau réalisme artists, such as Arman, who similarly amassed everyday objects—from collections of identical tools to piles of refuse—into vitrines in what he termed “accumulations” and “poubelles.” In addition to sculptural assemblages, Basen created two-dimensional collages from found objects like candy wrappers and other commercial packaging. Like the artist’s boxed constructions, the collages are compiled on a grid in a gesture of controlled reorganizing of chaos.

The Queen and Her Lover (1966) comprises two hanging figures, each an assemblage of metal parts and chains. Engraved tags represent their heads, reading “THE QUEEN” and “HER LOVER.” A sardine can makes up each of their cores—the queen’s embellished with glitter and feathers and her lover’s with a kind of dagger—its intimate interior and rectangular shape a stand-in for the box.  

This work is the first by Dan Basen to enter SJMA’s permanent collection. An assemblage artist and contemporary of Louise Nevelson, Basen’s work expands the context of SJMA’s growing Nevelson collection.  

Biography
Dan Basen was born in 1939 in Poughkeepsie, New York. He received an MFA from the Rinehart School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art (1963) and BS in Art Education from State University of New York at New Paltz (1961). He studied at the Brooklyn Museum of Art School (1963 – 64). Basen’s work has been featured in numerous museum exhibitions, including shows at the Baltimore Museum of Art; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. His work is in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In his short career, Basen received numerous awards, including a Hamburger Award for Sculpture from the Baltimore Museum of Art, a Peabody Fellowship of the Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore, and a Museum Purchase Prize from the Baltimore Museum of Art. (acquisitions meeting February 20, 2018)

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