WattsOS
MO
Myth of the Western Man
1986 · ceramic
Overall: 221.6 x 161.3 x 150.5 cm (87 1/4 x 63 1/2 x 59 1/4 in.); Head: 51.4 cm (20 1/4 in.)
Cleveland Museum of Art
WATTS INDEXThe canonical database of visual culture
Robert Arneson
American, 1930
WA-00025872
Benicia, CA, USA
SurrealismConceptual ArtExpressionism
Representation
None documented
3
Institutional Exhibitions
6
Works in Collection
10
Assets Indexed
4
Authority-backed Facts
0
Publications Referenced
80%
Profile Completeness
Cultural Positioning
Influence Graph
No influence edges encoded yet.
Authority Records (1)
Selected Institutional Exhibitions
View all exhibitions →No image
Committed to Print
Museum of Modern Art, New York
1988
No image
Recent Acquisitions: Drawings
Museum of Modern Art, New York
1981
No image
Dada, Surrealism and their Heritage
Museum of Modern Art, New York
1968
Field Verification (4 fields)
4 cross-verified · 0 single-source
- BiographyMoMA· 93%✓
- Birth yearArtsy· 85%✓
- NationalityArtsy· 85%✓
- LocationGallery Generic· 72%✓
Source Registry (3)
- Corbett-DempseyTier 3 · Scraped/inferred100%
- Christies-ArtsyTier 3 · Scraped/inferred100%
- MoMA bulk 2026-05-04Tier 1 · Institutional92%
About
Why this artist matters now
Robert Arneson was an American ceramic sculptor who transformed clay into a vehicle for figural expressionism and darkly comedic social commentary. Working primarily in glazed ceramic, he created oversized heads, torsos, and installations that merged high art ambitions with vernacular pottery traditions. His practice challenged the hierarchical separation between craft and fine art, establishing ceramics as a medium for conceptual and autobiographical work. Arneson's pieces often incorporated self-portraiture and political critique, engaging with postwar American anxieties through crude surfaces and exaggerated features.
Source: Corbett Dempsey · Trust score: 100% · Updated 1mo ago
Graph relationships
Taste overlap and adjacency
Movement
Surrealism
Medium
—
Related Artists
12 in graph
Institutional
Museum Collections
Canonical record
Artworks (6)
Artwork sources (2)
6 published of 8 catalogued · 2 with image
- Cleveland Museum of Art4 published
- MoMA2 publishedof 4 catalogued2 img
Per-Artwork Provenance Chains (top 4)
4 entries · 1 sources
- 1986 · Cleveland · 1 provUrl Pattern Extraction 2026-05-27·accession_number
- 1986 · Cleveland · 1 provUrl Pattern Extraction 2026-05-27·accession_number
- 1986 · Cleveland · 1 provUrl Pattern Extraction 2026-05-27·accession_number
- 1986 · Cleveland · 1 provUrl Pattern Extraction 2026-05-27·accession_number
Record
Images
Relationships
4Movements3
Collections1
Institutional
Representation & Collections
In collection
Museum of Modern Art
New York, US
Record