Sarah Charlesworth, Guerrilla Piece, June 4, 5, 1979, 1979.
Photostat, 24 1/4 x 15 ½ in.
Smith College Museum of Art, Gift of Rena G. Bransten, class of 1954
SC 2003:19-2b
Charlesworth worked in New York and first rose to prominence in the 1970s as part of the “Pictures Generation,” which included such artists as Richard Prince, Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, and Sherrie Levine. Her Guerrilla Piece, June 4, 5, 1979 is a series of ten prints which are taken from various newspapers dated June 4th and 5th, 1979. Charlesworth reproduced the same image of a wounded Sandinista used by all the newspapers, along with the corresponding masthead and caption for each one, but nothing else. She isolates the image on the print in order to partially remove its context. Guerrilla Piece is from Charlesworth’s series Modern History, which brings the viewer’s attention to how newspapers can change the way images are viewed according to their position, caption, and size.