Anthea Hamilton's The Piano Lesson (2007) is an attractive and critical piece that looks as though it is the brainchild of a disgruntled professional musician. Supported by Hamilton's opposite placed Mirrored Guitar, this piece's abundance of symbolism points to musical relations and metaphors in the form of balance, rhythm, and control.
Balance is presented as two separate colored balls sitting upon the two tiptoed feet of an upside-down transparent half-mannequin, an upright half-mannequin standing upon one leg, and a ball sitting still atop a stack of smooth tiles. Meanwhile, rhythm is evident in The Piano Lesson's stage - a crosswalk of black and white tiled keys - and is highlighted by two sets of evenly splayed bamboo sticks, which are clear representations of a grand piano's 'harp' of strings. And as if to entice the viewer into engaging more than just their visual sense, Hamilton places at the center of her piece a lanky piece of plywood whose undulations mimic the sound waves emanating from the keys below.
Upon closer examination of the vertical bamboo harp, one notices that between the bamboo sticks lies a smattering of broken and multicolored tiles. One might think this was disruptive, but amidst piano keys and sonorous planks of wood we see the musician's challenge. Hamilton gives us the pieces and asks us to control the chaos. Are you a virtuoso who envisions these broken tiles as a mosaic, or an unpracticed pupil whose touch is as delicate as an elephant's?
Above The Piano Lesson is a croissant hanging by a noose. If that croissant is representative of the beauty at stake when you are playing an instrument, then there is only one conclusion left to be drawn:
Apparently you're an elephant.
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