Interception

Date: 1996
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1996/1996.78_1a.jpg?itok=hV0HGssl width="384" height="256" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/interception-35366"]] || Title: **Interception**

Artist: **Mark Tansey** Born: San Jose, California 1949

Medium: oil on canvas 71 1/4 x 108 1/4 in. (181.0 x 275.0 cm.) Smithsonian American Art Museum Museum purchase made possible by the American Art Forum

Accession: 1996.78 || This image recalls an eighteenth-century painting illustrating an ancient legend about the origins of art. According to the Greeks, art was invented when a young woman made the first figurative image by tracing the silhouette of her lover on a wall. Mark Tansey's use of the story reminds us that art is rooted in human emotion and desire.
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The projected image in Tansey's painting is taken from Jean Baptiste Reignault's //The Origin of Painting//:

Artist Biography SAAM Collections Page
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