Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture: The Baths
Rem Koolhaas
Dutch, born 1944
Madelon Vriesendorp
Dutch, born 1945
Elia Zenghelis
British, born Greece 1937
Zoe Zenghelis
British, born Greece 1937
1972
A paper montage combining photolithograph, ink, and pasted gelatin-silver prints in which Rem Koolhaas stages a theatrical, gridlike bathing complex to probe how architecture compels people to become 'voluntary prisoners.'
The image hits with a stark, perspective-driven void: a black, stepped pavilion pierced by a precise grid of small black-and-white photographs of bodies and gatherings, set on a tiled plain under an eerie blue moonlit sky that reads like both a stage and a cell.
Part manifesto and representational experiment, this 1972 collage helped establish Koolhaas’s use of cinematic photomontage to argue that architecture organizes behavior, influencing later theoretical practice and the visual language architects use to critique urban programs.
Medium
Cut-and-pasted paper, photolithograph, and gelatin silver photographs with ink on paper
Dimensions
16 1/8 x 11 1/2" (41 x 29.2 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Takeo Ohbayashi Purchase Fund, and Susan de Menil Purchase Fund
Accession
369.1996
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
