A Means to Identify the Wearer McDermott & McGough  (American, b.b.1952, b.1958)

McDermott & McGough consists of contemporary visual artists David McDermott and Peter McGough who were known as much for their time-traveling retro lifestyle as for their pseudo-historical art. Working in painting, photography, sculpture and film, McDermott & McGough used alternative historical processes in their photography, including the techniques of cyanotype, gum bichromate, salt, tri color carbo, platinum and palladium. And in this case, photogravure.

Among the subjects they approached were popular art and culture, religion, medicine, advertising, time, fashion and sexual behavior. They dressed in Edwardian clothes, drove a 1913 Model-T Ford and eschewed modern conveniences. As lovers, they shared an apartment on Avenue C that lacked a telephone, television or electric lights.

New York: Kevin Begos Publishing & Lunn Ltd., 1994, an edition of 30 numbered copies, 8 artist’s proofs, one printer’s proof, the bon à tirer, one platemaker’s, and 2 cancellation proofs, a portfolio of 10 photogravures, each signed, titled, and numbered by the photographers in pencil on the reverse, 1994; together with the printed title, colophon, and plate list. Folio, blue wrappers with flaps, the rear wrapper reinforced with board, the photographers’ letterpress label on the front, Lunn, Ltd., New York/Paris

Reproduced / Exhibited

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 2002.1640

References

‘They Were Victorian Dandies Who Made Art. Now They’re On the Outs.’ By Steven Kurutz, New York Times Published Jan. 10, 2020