Pieced the image together from Sotheby’s website – I felt I should compose as large an image as I can because this piece is very unusual. Why is it unusual? Because a paperclip is the badge of a quintessential bureaucrat, a man or a woman pushing papers from one tray to another under the pressure of a relentless authority figure. The piece was recently sold at an auction on Sotheby’s and my hope is it hasn’t been magnetized and used as a paper clip holder by an actual bureaucrat. Authority has always been a good incentive for work. The quality of the authority directly correlates with the quality of the work. Rejection and glorification of authority have prodded countless artists from around the world in all of history - from anonymous Tibetan sand paintings, to painful tomb sculptures commissioned by Michelangelo's patrons, to the soft paintings in the Papal chambers, to the pro-totalitarian message of the Russian Constructivists, to various rejections of reality like Abstract Expressionism.
"Executed in 1963; this wax model was cast by the Rudier foundry then covered in paperclips by Dalí."
