Christian Marclay | Music Box

Christian Marclay

Untitled (Music Box)

Santa Monica, USA: Peter Norton Family Foundation, 2005

13 x 9.5 x 7 cm.

Edition size unknown

You can imagine the excitement when Christian Marclay realized that Silent was an anagram of Listen, and then Tinsel, too, making it perfect for a Christmas music box. 

The work consists of a hinged-lid pine wooden music box accompanied by a card that reads: "Each year, Peter Norton commissions a work of art to celebrate the holiday season. This year's edition is by Christian Marclay... For this project, Marclay has composed 'Tinsel' - a seamless melodic loop without beginning or end that incorporates the gradual slowing of the unwinding mechanism - To play with our expectations of the music box..."

The word SILENT is engraved on the exterior and LISTEN on the interior, a possible nod to Ken Friedman's Fluxus box Open and Shut Case which Marclay would have known well. 

The work was manfucatred by Reuge, a renowned Swiss “Maison” specializing in luxury music boxes and singing bird automata that was founded by Charles Reuge in 1865. In 2005, they were the last remaining music box manufacturers in Switzerland. 

Other multiples and artists’ books in the Peter Norton Christmas series include a porcelain ashtray, a lapel pin, a printed fan, a music box, a CD, a woven blanket, a lifesaver, a dollhouse, trophies, cards, a cup & saucer, a slide viewer, salt & pepper shakers as snow globes,  pop up books by Peter Coffin and Kara Walker, etc., etc.  Participating artists include Robert Lazzarini, Do Ho Suh, Ry Rocklen, Takashi Murakami, Anna Gaskell, Yinka Shonibare, Sanford Biggers, Yasumasa Morimura, Christian Marclay, Vik Muniz, Sanford Biggers, Nina Katchadourian, Marc Swanson, Jim Hodges, Kevin Sommers, Brian Eno & Peter Schmidt, Benjamin Lord, Richard Kostelanetz, Lorna Simpson, Lawrence Weiner, and many others.