Tim HawkinsonThe Strangeness of Bodies

large humaan figure with no head and exxagerated hands and feet
Tim Hawkinson, Scout, 2006–07. Cardboard, box strapping, and urethane foam, 69 1/2 x 103 x 68 inches. San José Museum of Art. Gift of the Lipman Family Foundation, 2013.12.

The mind-body relationship—that distinctive network between our consciousness and our corporeal being—is at the center of Tim Hawkinson’s work.1 Scout (2006–07), a nearly six-foot-tall headless human figure, is a humorous and strange portrait that proportionally registers the degree of the average brain’s attention to senses in different parts of the body, so the hands, feet, and genitals are disproportionately giant. Typical of Hawkinson’s eccentric aesthetic, Scout’s skin is made of cardboard boxes from the garment factory adjacent to the artist’s Los Angeles studio, stitched together. A kind of Frankenstein monster made of everyday materials, Scout reflects the nature of our being—a bodily map reflecting the human mind.

  1. Lawrence Rinder, “My Favorite Things,” in Tim Hawkinson, ed. Lawrence Rinder (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2005), 14–15. ↩︎