Tom Sachs

This is Piet Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie by Tom Sachs. A compromise of authenticity by the artist to own a real Mondrian. Sachs spent months observing the work at the New York Museum of Modern Arts and recreated the composition using store bought duct tape, probably spending more time with the original work than the artefacts 'real owner at the time. Appearance for Sachs leans on the same logic that Debord built at the end of the last millennia. Perhaps this replica is Sach’s ‘need’ for the status symbol or simply an aesthetic fetish, none the less it ‘appears’ as the same object.

Need, dislocated from function and married to appearance.

If it looks like a Mondian and aesthetically functions as one, it is one, because it will be seen as one. In this case time and attention to detail are the stand in for the assimilation to function. This model is described to be “not fake, but simply unauthorised” Sacks describes. There are different advantages to this particular model of the work though, it's reproducibility, durability and accessibility.