Dimensions: object: 1219 x 914 x 216 mm
Copyright: © John Latham Estate, courtesy Lisson Gallery, London | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Editor: This is John Latham's "Burial of Count Orgaz," currently residing in the Tate Collections. It's quite a striking object. All those layers and textures make it feel almost… archaeological. How do you read this piece? Curator: Well, it's a fascinating echo of El Greco’s masterpiece, right? Latham seems to be burying not just a count, but perhaps a whole system of knowledge. See how the books are embedded, almost fossilized? Editor: Yes! I was thinking about that. Like knowledge petrified. Is there a sense of mourning, then, or is it more critical? Curator: Perhaps both. A mourning for lost forms of knowledge and a critique of how we entomb ideas. It's messy, isn’t it? Editor: It really is, but in a thought-provoking way. I see the old and the new intertwined. Curator: Precisely! And maybe that's the point. Burial, yes, but also transformation.
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http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/latham-burial-of-count-orgaz-t02069
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This work is based on El Greco's 1586 painting of the same title. Latham was impressed by the way El Greco had depicted two states of being in the same picture. El Greco shows the Count of Orgaz being entombed and, above that scene, being received into Heaven. In paraphrasing El Greco's work, Latham was announcing his own preoccupation with the idea of a unified universe. From 1958 Latham began to incorporate books as sculptural elements in his work. Here, books are used in combination with other objects including a sponge, whisky bottle, fireguard 'and a flintstone for God'. An old bagatelle board suggests the curved shape of the El Greco. Gallery label, September 2004
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