Morphologie: City Metaphors

Oswald Mathias Ungers, artist

1926–2007

Morphologie: City Metaphors, 1982, printed 2011

Where object was made: Germany

Material/technique: offset lithograph; wove paper

Dimensions:
Object Height/Width/Depth (Height x Width x Depth): 200 x 140 x 11 mm
Object Height/Width/Depth (Height x Width x Depth): 7 7/8 x 5 1/2 x 0 7/16 in

Credit line: Museum purchase: Elmer F. Pierson Fund

Accession number: 2012.0005

Not on display

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Images

Label texts

Cryptograph: An Exhibition for Alan Turing

In this small volume, architect, artist, and theorist Oswald Mathias Ungers engages with morphology, the biological study of the internal and external forms of life, which focuses particularly on structures and patterns. Rather than limiting his scope to the natural world, Ungers playfully explores the morphology of his entire visual universe, incorporating prints, drawings, photographs, and diagrams from a range of sources and time periods. He narrates this exploration through single words, iterated in English and German, alluding to the morphologies of language as well as form. Ungers creates a dialogue between the micro and the macro through the juxtaposition of maps, city plans, and architectural diagrams with representations of human figures, plants, animals, and even cell structures.
In the introduction to his artistic inquiry Ungers states: “This book shows the most transcendental aspect, the underlying perception that goes beyond actual design. In other terms, it shows the common design principle which is similar in dissimilar conditions. There are three levels of reality: the factual reality-the object; the perceptual reality-the analogy; and conceptual reality-the the idea, shown as the plan-the image-the word.”

Exhibition Label:
"Cryptograph: An Exhibition for Alan Turing," Mar-2012, Stephen Goddard
In this small volume, architect, artist, and theorist Oswald Mathias Ungers engages with morphology, the biological study of the internal and external forms of life, which focuses particularly on structures and patterns. Rather than limiting his scope to the natural world, Ungers playfully explores the morphology of his entire visual universe, incorporating prints, drawings, photographs, and diagrams 38 from a range of sources and time periods. He narrates this exploration through single words, iterated in English and German, alluding to the morphologies of language as well as form. Ungers creates a dialogue between the micro and the macro through the juxtaposition of maps, city plans, and architectural diagrams with representations of human figures, plants, animals, and even cell structures. In the introduction to his artistic inquiry Ungers states:
“This book shows the most transcendental aspect, the underlying perception that goes beyond actual design. In other terms, it shows the common design principle which is similar in dissimilar conditions. There are three levels of reality: the factual reality-the object; the perceptual reality-the analogy; and conceptual reality-the the idea, shown as the plan-the image-the word.”